ffAFB BOOKS for Students andGcneral Readers 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



LOUNSBURY 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESsT 



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Shelf. . .U.te 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERTCA. 



HANDBOOKS for Students and General Readers 
IN SCIENCE, LITERATURE, ART, AND HISTORY. 

Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. have begun the publication of a Series of 
brief flandbooks in various departments of knowledge. The grade of the 
books is intermediate between the so-called " primers''' and the larger works 
professing to present quite detailed views. Generally, they will be found 
available by upper classes in schools which can not give much time to the 
subjects, and by mature persons of little leisure who wish to enlarge or revise 
their knowledge. 

J he subjects and authors, so far as selected, are as follows : 

VOLUMES PUBLISHED. 

Zoology of the Invertebrate Animals. By Alex. Macalister, 

M.D., Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the University 

of Dublin. Specially revised for America by A. S. Packard, Jr., 

M.D., Professor of Zoology and Geology in Brown University, 6octs. 

Zoology of the Vertebrate Animals. By the above authors. 
i6mo. 60 cts. 

Zoology. The preceding two volumes in one. i6mo. $1.00. 

The Studio Arts. By Elizabeth Winthrop Johnson. i6mo. 60c. 

Astronomy. By R. S. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S., Astronomer Royal for 
Ireland. Specially Revised for America by Simon Newcomb, Superin- 
tendent American Nautical Almanac ; formerly Professor at the U. S. 
Naval Observatory. i6mo. 60c. 

Practical Physics — Molecular Physics and Sound. By 

Frederick Guthrie, Ph.D. F.R.SS. L. & E., Professor of Physics 
in the Royal School of Mines, London. i6mo. 60c. (See Practical 
Physics below.) 

History of American Politics. By Alexander Johnston, 
A.M. i6mo. 75c. 

History of the English Language. By T. R. Lounsbury, 
Professor of English in Yale College, i6mo, $1.00. 

FOR TH CO MING VOL UMES. 
Architecture. By Russell Sturgis, A.M., Architect, Professor of 
Architecture and the Arts of Design, in the College of the City of N. Y. 

Botany. Morphology and Physiology. By \V. R. McNab, 
M.D., F.L.S., Professor of Botany, Royal College of Science for 
Ireland, Dublin. Revised by C. E. Bessey, M.S., Professor of 
Botany in the Iowa Agricultural College. 

Botany. Classification of Plants. By W. R. McNab, Revised 
by C. E. Bessey. 

English Literature. By 

French Literature. By Ferdinand Bocher, Professor in Harvard 
University. 

German Literature. By 

Jurisprudence. By Johnson T. Platt, Professor in the Law 

Department of Yale College. 
Mechanics. By R. S. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S. 

Practical Physics— Electricity and Magnetism. By Prof. 
F. Guthrie, Ph.D. 

Practical Physics— Heat and Light. By Pi of. F. Guthrie. 

Physical Geography. By Clarence King, Director of the U. S. 

Government Surveys. 
Political Economy. By Professor Francis A. Walker, Ph.D 



HANDBOOKS for Students and General Readers. 



HISTORY 



OF THE 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



BY 

T. R. LOUNSBURY 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC 
SCHOOL OF YALE COLLEGE. 




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.C,rYftlGn>'£v 



NEW YORK %J««^ 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1879 



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XI 



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|879 



Copyright, 

By HENRY HOLT & CO., 

1879. 



Franklin Press: 

Stereotyped by Rand, Avery, & Co., 

Boston. 



EXPLANATORY. 



This Series is intended to meet the requirement of 
brief text-books both for schools and for adult readers 
who wish to review or expand their knowledge. 

The grade of the books is intermediate between the 
so-called "primers" and the larger works professing 
to present quite detailed views of the respective sub- 
jects. 

Such a notion as a person beyond childhood re- 
quires of some subjects, it is difficult and perhaps 
impossible to convey in one such volume. Therefore, 
occasionally a volume is given to each of the main 
departments into which a subject naturally falls — for 
instance, a volume to the Zoology of the vertebrates, 
and one to that of the invertebrates. While this ar- 
rangement supplies a compendious treatment for those 
who wish, it will also sometimes enable the reader 
interested in only a portion of the field covered by a 
science, to study the part he is interested in, without 
getting a book covering the whole. 

Care is taken to bring out whatever educational 
value may be extracted from each subject without im- 



vi Explanatory. 

peding the exposition of it. In the books on the 
sciences, not only are acquired results stated, but as 
full explanation as possible is given of the methods of 
inquiry and reasoning by which these results have 
been obtained. Consequently, although the treatment 
of each subject is strictly elementary, the fundamental 
facts are stated and discussed with the fulness needed 
to place their scientific significance in a clear light, 
and to show the relation in which they stand to the 
general conclusions of science. 

Care is also taken that each book admitted to the 
series shall either be the work of a recognized author- 
ity, or bear the unqualified approval of such. As far 
as practicable, authors are selected who combine 
knowledge of their subjects with experience in teach- 
ing them. 



PREFACE. 



The general plan of this volume is so fully stated in 
the conclusion of the introductory chapter, that little 
needs to be said in addition. One or two explanatory 
statements.it may be advisable to make. 

The history is a history of the language, and not at 
all of the literature. To any real comprehension of 
the former, however, some knowledge of the latter is 
essential; and inasmuch as, in the case of Anglo- 
Saxon and Early English, sources of information on 
this subject are not easily accessible to most readers, 
a slight sketch of the literature of those periods has 
been given. 

The division of the history into two parts, each to 
a certain extent complete in itself, has involved in a 
few instances the necessity of going over the same 
ground. In no case, however, will this be found to 



vi Preface. 

be mere repetition. And, while the second part has 
been more particularly prepared for the special stu- 
dent, it is hoped that there is nothing in it which will 
present any difficulty to any reader of ordinary intelli- 
gence who cares to investigate the subject. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

LANGUAGES ALLIED TO THE ENGLISH. 

I. The Indian. — II. The Iranian. — III. The Hellenic — 
IV. The Slavonic, or Slavo-Lettic. — V. The Celtic — 
VI. The Italic — VII. The Teutonic . I 



PART I. 
GENERAL HISTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTONIC CONQUESTS OF BRITAIN. 

The Roman Conquest. — The Teutonic Conquest. — Names 
of the Teutonic Invading Tribes, and Kingdoms found- 
ed by them. — Rise of the Kingdom of Wessex . „ 13 

vii 



< 



V1U Contents. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 

Language of the Teutonic Invaders. — Differences between 
Anglo-Saxon and Modern English. — Anglo-Saxon Lit- 
erature. — Poetry. — Prose 21 

CHAPTER III. 

INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN TONGUES UPON THE ENGLISH OF 
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD. 

Celtic. — Latin. — Scandinavian 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN 

ENGLAND. 

The Norman-French. — The Norman Conquest. — Effect 
of the Conquest upon the Native Language. — French 
and English Languages on English Soil. — Rise in Im- 
portance of the English. — Rise of Modern English Lit- 
erature. — Debasement of Anglo-Norman French. — 
General Adoption of English by all Classes . . . 39 



CHAPTER V. 

PERIODS IN HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, AND THE 
CHANGES WROUGHT IN IT BY THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 

The Language before the Conquest. — The Language after 
the Conquest. — Periods of the English Language. — 
Literature of the Early English period. — Changes in 
Grammar between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. — 
Changes in Vocabulary. — Losses of Middle English as 
compared with Anglo-Saxon 66 



Contents. ix 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE THREE DIALECTS OF EARLY ENGLISH, AND THE RISE 
OF THE MIDLAND. 

The Three Early English Dialects. — Geographical Limits 
of the Three Dialects. — The Scotch Dialect . . 90 

CHAPTER VII. 

CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (135O-I550). 

Declension of Nouns. — Declension of the Third Personal 
Pronoun. — Inflection of the Verb . . . .110 

CHAPTER VIII. 

MODERN ENGLISH. 

Inflection of the Pronoun. — Inflection of the Verb. — Set- 
tlement of the Orthography. — Wide Extension of Eng- 
lish 126 



PART II. 
HISTORY OF INFLECTIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

SOME FEATURES COMMON TO ALL THE TEUTONIC TONGUES. 

Case. — Number. — Declension. — Vowel Declension in a ; 
in i; in u. — Consonant Declension. — Rhotacism. — 
Vowel-Variation. — Vowel-Change. — Vowel-Modifica- 
tion 151 



x Contents. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE NOUN. 

I. Vowel Declension. — II. Consonant Declension . . 168 
CHAPTER III. 

THE ADJECTIVE. 

Indefinite (Pronominal or Strong) Declension. — Definite 
(Nominal or Weak) Declension. — Comparison • 195 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRONOUN. 

The Demonstrative Pronouns. — The Personal Pronouns. 

— The Interrogative Pronouns. — The Relative Pro- 
nouns 207 

CHAPTER V. 

THE VERB. 

The Teutonic Verb. — General Statements. — Conflict of 
the Strong and Weak Conjugations. — The English 
Strong Conjugation. — The Past Participle of the 
Strong Conjugation. — The Weak Conjugation. — Past 
Participle of the Weak Conjugation. — Number and 
Person. — Tenses of the Verb. — The Present Tense, 
Indicative and Subjunctive. — The Preterite Indicative 
and Subjunctive. — The Future Tense. — Future-perfect 
Tense. — The Perfect and Pluperfect. — The Impera- 
tive, -r- The Infinitive and Participles. — Passive Forma- 
tions. — Preterite-present Verbs. — Cunnan. — Durran. 

— Sculan. — Magan. — Motan. — Agan. — Witan. — 
Willan. — Irregular Verbs 238 

Index of Words and Phrases 357 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

LANGUAGES ALLIED TO THE ENGLISH. 

The most superficial student of speech is well 
acquainted with the fact that English is no isolated, 
independent tongue, but one of the members of a 
vast family, embracing tongues far removed from one 
another, both in time and in space. This family occu- 
pied, at an early period, large districts of Asia, and 
nearly the whole of Europe ; and during the last four 
hundred years its domain has been extended still 
farther, over a great portion of the habitable globe. 
Various names have been employed to designate it 
as a whole ; of which those most in use are Indo- 
Germanic, Indo-European, and Aryan, especially the 
last two. Every one of the Indo-European lan- 
guages is more or less closely related to every other 
by the fact of descent from a common mother- 
tongue. Yet of this common mother-tongue not only 



2 English Language. 

have no monuments been handed down, but also the 
time when and the place where it was spoken are 
unknown, and are likely to remain forever unknown. 
This only we can say, that, at some remote periods of 
the past, members of the race that spoke the primitive 
Indo-European speech or later descendants of it, 
parted company from one another, wandered in vari- 
ous directions, and finally formed permanent settle- 
ments far apart. Lapse of time, and separation in 
space, caused differences to spring up between these 
dispersed communities, — differences in customs, in 
beliefs, and, what most concerns us here, in language. 
The divergences that arose became, in the course 
of events, so much more important and conspicuous 
than the resemblances which had been preserved, that, 
when the scattered races and peoples that had sprung 
from this one primitive Indo-European tribe appear 
to us in recorded history, they are totally unaware of the 
tie of blood or of speech that subsists between them ; 
in fact, it was not discovered until within a hundred 
years. The scientific study which has been carried 
on in the present century of the languages of the Indo- 
European family shows that in all branches of it there 
is a certain number of the same grammatical forms 
and of the same words. These are not merely proofs 
of a common descent : their common existence makes 
it clear that these forms and words must have belonged 
to the speech of the primitive Indo-European commu- 
nity before its dispersion into separate ones ; and from 
it they must have been transmitted to all its descend- 



Languages allied to the English. 3 

ants. By a comparison of the forms and words thus 
preserved in the derived languages, it has been possi- 
ble to construct a theoretical primitive language, which 
is the remote parent of every tongue included in this 
family. 

Bound to each other, therefore, by the fact of com- 
mon descent, all Indo-European tongues necessarily 
are ; but it likewise follows that some are much more 
closely related to one another than they are to others. 
According to the nearness of this relationship among 
themselves, the languages of the Indo-European 
stock have been divided into the following distinct 
branches : — 

I. The Indian. — This embraces the languages 
of Northern Hindostan. Its great representative is 
the Sanskrit, which, as a spoken tongue, died out three 
centuries before Christ. It is the oldest of all the lan- 
guages of the Indo-European family, and as a whole 
comes nearest to the primitive speech. 

II. The Iranian. — This includes the languages 
of both Ancient and Modern Persia and of provinces 
and tribes adjoining or belonging to that country. 

III. The Hellenic. — This includes the Ancient 
Greek, with its various dialects, and its existing repre- 
sentative, the Romaic or Modern Greek. 

IV. The Slavonic, or Slavo-Lettic— This in- 
cludes the languages spoken over a large portion of 
Eastern Europe. Of this branch the Russian is much 
the most important. 

With none of these has the English any intimate 



4 English Language. 

relationship, though from the Ancient Greek it has 
borrowed a moderately large number of words. With 
the three remaining branches its connections are nearer, 
though varying in their nature. With the first it has 
come into close geographical contact ; from the sec- 
ond it has taken full half of its literary vocabulary ; of 
the third it is itself a member. 

V. The Celtic. — This branch was once widely 
spread over Western Europe ; but it is now confined 
to portions of the British Isles, and, in North-western 
France, to the Peninsula of Britanny, a part of the 
ancient Armorica. It is divided into the two follow- 
ing clearly-defined groups : ist, The Cymric. To this 
belong the languages or dialects once used through- 
out the whole of England and Southern Scotland, but 
now limited to the principality of Wales, and repre- 
sented in it by the tongue we call the Welsh. The 
Cornish, the language of the extreme south-west of 
Britain, which died out entirely in the last century, was 
also a member of this group, which includes one other 
living tongue besides the Welsh, — the Breton or Ar- 
morican, spoken in the Peninsula of Britanny, as 
already mentioned. 2d, The Gadhelic or Gaelic. Of 
this group the most important members are the Irish, 
the native language of Ireland, and the Erse, the lan- 
guage of the Scottish Highlands. The Manx, spoken 
by a portion of the population of the Isle of Man, is 
also included in it. The Celtic tongues are all grad- 
ually dying out ; giving way in the British Isles to the 
encroachment of the English, and in France to that 



Languages allied to the English. 5 

of the French. Linguistically they are widely removed 
from our tongue, and, in spite of their geographical 
nearness, have had no influence worth speaking of on 
its vocabulary, and none at all on its grammar. 

VI. The Italic. — Of the ancient languages in- 
cluded in this branch, the Latin is the great represen- 
tative ; and from that tongue have descended all the 
modern ones belonging to it. These are collectively 
called Romanic or Romance. The most important 
of the descendants of the Latin are the Italian, the 
Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, and the Proven- 
cal. French was at first the language of Northern 
France only ; while Provencal, or the Languedoc, was 
the language of the south of that country. The 
latter, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
especially, flourished as a language of literature, and 
in it was then composed the poetry of the trouba- 
dours. But the political preponderance of Northern 
France carried with it the supremacy of the tongue 
spoken in it ; and the Provencal sunk from the position 
of a cultivated language to that of a dialect. The in- 
fluence of this branch upon the English has been very 
great so far as regards its vocabulary. The Latin and 
Romance elements in our tongue, owing to circum- 
stances connected with its history, make up fully one- 
half of the number of words used in literature. 

VII. The Teutonic— Of this branch English 
is one of the most important members, and may, 
perhaps, be justly called the most important. As we 
have no remains of the primitive Indo-European, so 



6 English Language. 

we have none of the primitive Teutonic speech, from 
which all the tongues belonging to this stock have 
descended. This whole branch is subdivided into four 
groups : — 

i. The Gothic, or Moeso -Gothic, — This was the 
tongue spoken by the Goths who dwelt in Moesia, 
on the Lower Danube. It is the eldest of the Teu- 
tonic tongues that have been preserved, and naturally 
much the most ancient in its forms ; standing, indeed, 
in the same relation to the other members of this 
branch that the Sanskrit does to all the members of 
the Indo-European family. Its principal literary 
monument is only partially preserved. This was a 
translation of the Bible made in the fourth century 
into the language of the Goths dwelling in the prov- 
ince of Mcesia on the Lower Danube, by Ulfilas, their 
bishop. The speech died out in the ninth century, 
and has left no descendants. 

2. The Norse, or Scandinavian. — The oldest repre- 
sentative of this group is the Old Norse, or, as it is 
sometimes called, the Old Icelandic. To Iceland it 
was carried in the ninth century by settlers from Nor- 
way, and there gave birth to a brilliant literature. The 
modern Scandinavian tongues are the Icelandic, the 
Swedish, the Danish, and the Norwegian. The last is 
a popular dialect only. 

3. The High- Germanic. — This is so called because 
originally spoken in Upper or Higher Germany. The 
history of the dialects belonging to it is divided into 
three periods. The first is that of the Old High Ger- 



Languages allied to the English. 7 

man, extending from the eighth to the twelfth century. 
The leading literary dialect of the Old High German 
was the Frankish, though others were employed. The 
second period was that of Middle High German, ex- 
tending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. 
This literature was very abundant in quantity, and rich 
in quality : the dialect in which it was written was the 
Swabian. The New High German begins with the 
writings of the reformer Luther, in the first half of 
the sixteenth century, especially with his translation 
of the Bible. It is the language of all modern Ger- 
man literature, and is by us usually termed simply the 
German. 

4. The Low Germanic. — This was so called be- 
cause originally spoken in Northern or Low Germany. 
This group consists of several tongues, of which some 
are now only popular dialects, having been reduced to 
this condition by the predominance of High German as 
the language of literature. The four ancient tongues 
of this group are the Friesic, the Netherlandish, the 
Old Saxon, and the Saxon or English. The Friesic 
was once spoken on the coasts of the North Sea and on 
the adjoining islands. Its oldest records consist of 
legal documents of about the thirteenth century, and 
it is now only an idiom of the common people. The 
Netherlandish and the Old Saxon were closely related. 
From them have descended the Dutch of Holland, 
the Flemish of portions of Belgium, and the Piatt 
Deutsch, or Low German proper. This last is still a 
wide-spread popular idiom in Northern Germany, and 



8 English Language. 

is occasionally employed in literature. Last and most 
important of this group is the Saxon, or English, car- 
ried in the fifth and sixth centuries to Great Britain by 
the Saxons and Angles, and there having a history, and 
developing a literature peculiarly its own. The earliest 
form of it is commonly designated by modern writers 
as Anglo-Saxon. 

While English is, therefore, spoken of with sufficient 
accuracy as a member of the Indo-European family 
of languages, it is more specifically to be described as 
a member of the Low Germanic group of the Teutonic 
branch of that family. Its history, like that of all 
other tongues, naturally divides itself into two parts. 
The first embraces what, for lack of a better term, may 
be called its general history ; that is, the account of 
the circumstances and conditions under which it de- 
veloped its present form, of the external agencies that 
operated upon it, especially the social and political in- 
fluences that affected it, that modified it, and, in particu- 
lar, that changed the character of its vocabulary, and 
transformed it from an inflectional speech into one 
nearly non-inflectional. The second is the history of 
the internal changes which took place within the lan- 
guage itself. It is obvious at a glance that the latter is 
a far more intricate and extensive subject than the 
former. It embraces, indeed, a vast variety of subjects, 
the full consideration of any one of which would require 
a separate volume. This work will treat of so much 
only of this internal history as is concerned with the 
variations of form that have taken place in the noun, 



Languages allied to the English. 9 

the adjective, the pronoun, and the verb, caused by 
change or loss of inflection. Some notice will neces- 
sarily be taken, in addition, of the steps which the lan- 
guage has resorted to in order to increase its resources, 
and to repair the losses it has sustained, either by the 
development of forms entirely new, or the application 
of old forms to new uses. This is but a small por- 
tion of the immense field which must be covered in 
any full account of the interior growth and develop- 
ment of our speech ; but beyond these limits there 
will, in this treatise, be no attempt to go. 



PART I. 
GENERAL HISTORY. 



( - 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTONIC CONQUESTS 
OF BRITAIN. 

The English tongue is at the present time the 
speech Qf communities scattered over all the globe ; 
but its history as a language is almost wholly confined 
to the Island of Great Britain. There it was that the 
violent changes which took place in the social and 
political condition of the people were indirectly fol- 
lowed by as violent changes in the character and 
grammatical structure of the words they spoke. With- 
out an adequate knowledge of the former, no one can 
gain a satisfactory conception of the latter. The 
Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the Northmen, and the 
French have met or succeeded one another upon 
British soil ; and the occupation of the country by 
each has left ineffaceable records of itself in the 
tongue we use to-day. But English was not the origi- 
nal speech of the island. In the modern form in 
which we know it, it can, indeed, hardly lay claim to a 
higher age than ^ivq hundred years. It is, therefore, 

*3 



14 English Language, 

quite as important to understand clearly what English 
is not, as well as what it is. 

The Roman Conquest. — Great Britain can 
hardly be said to be known to history until a short 
time before the Christian era. Our first positive infor- 
mation in regard to it we owe to Julius Caesar, who, 
after his conquest of Gaul, turned his attention to the 
island, and twice invaded it, — once in 55 B.C., and 
again in the following year. He founds there a people 
allied in blood and speech to the one he had just 
brought under Roman sway, and both belonging to 
the race called Celtic, then widely spread over Wes- 
tern Europe. It was the Cymric branch of this 
family, now represented in Great Britain by the Welsh, 
that had possession of most of the island ; and it was 
with this that Caesar came into contact. His success 
was rather nominal than real ; for though he marched 
a little way into the interior, and exacted the payment 
of a tribute, he seems, in the words of Tacitus, to have 
handed down to posterity the discovery of the coun- 
try rather than its possession. For nearly a hundred 
years afterward it remained unmolested by the Ro- 
mans. But in the reign of the Emperor Claudian a 
renewed attempt at conquest began, in A.D. 42, and 
was kept up without intermission till near the close of 
the first century. By that time the reduction of the 
island was accomplished as far north as the Forth. 
Beyond that the invaders never gained any thing but 
a temporary foothold. 

With the conquest of the greater portion of the 



Roman and Teutonic Conquests. 15 

island the Romans began that energetic administra- 
tion, which, in the case of Gaul and Spain, ended in 
making the native inhabitants of those countries as 
Latin as the inhabitants of Italy itself. Colonies were 
established, towns were fortified, military roads were 
constructed. With their laws and customs,' the invad- 
ers introduced also their language and literature. 
These last early became popular ; and the attention 
paid to them must have steadily increased during the 
more than three hundred years in which the Romans 
occupied the island. Yet, however widely the Latin 
tongue was then used, it manifestly never made its 
way in Britain as it did in Gaul and Spain. It was 
without doubt chiefly confined to the educated classes 
and to the dwellers in cities ; for, with the withdrawal 
of the Romans in the early part of the fifth century, 
their language disappeared almost as completely. 
Some of its words were retained in the speech of the 
native population, and have been handed down in the 
speech of their descendants ; but perhaps not a single 
one of these has passed directly from this source over 
into the English tongue. Traces of the Roman occu- 
pation are, indeed, to be found in names of towns. 
The Latin colonia, ' colony,' is seen in the final syllable 
of Lincoln ; the Latin castra, ' camp,' is preserved in 
the names of a large number of places ending in 
-caster, -cester, and -Chester, as Lancaster, Worcester, 
and Winchester. Likewise the word ' street,' which 
is nothing more than the first word of strata via, 
' paved way,' may have come to us in consequence 



1 6 English Language. 

of the Teutonic invaders hearing the term first applied 
by the Britons to the Roman military roads ; but this 
is doubtful, for the same term appears very early in 
all the Teutonic dialects. It is possible that one or 
two other words may have been derived in this way 
from this source ; but it is evident that the Latin of 
the Roman occupation exercised no appreciable influ- 
ence ^upon the English speech properly so called. 
Still, as the Roman names of towns have been retained 
to this day, to the words denoting these is often given 
the title of " Latin of the First Period." 

The Teutonic Conquest. — Up,- to this time, 
English was not known in the islftnd. It was to the 
Teutonic invasion, that followed soon after the Roman 
occupation ceased, that we owe the introduction of 
our language into Great Britain, and the gradual dis- 
placement of the Celtic tongues. 

The story of this Teutonic invasion and conquest is 
in many respects obscure and uncertain ; but, while 
numerous details may be mythical rather than his- 
torical, the general statement cannot be far from the 
truth. The common account runs somewhat as fol- 
lows : Of the western provinces of the Roman Empire, 
Great Britain was the last to be conquered, the first to 
be abandoned. Its inhabitants were left, in the first 
half of the fifth century, exposed to the attacks of the 
dwellers in the northern part of the island, the Picts 
and Scots, who had never been really subdued, and 
whose incursions had always been, from the time of the 
first conquest, a source of annoyance and alarm. In 



Roman and Teutonic Conquests. \J 

their extremity the wretched population called for 
aid upon certain Teutonic tribes dwelling upon the 
north coast of Germany. It was by these the English 
language was brought into Great Britain; for the 
new auxiliaries did not long remain contented with 
the limited territory which had been assigned them, 
but, soon turning their arms against their allies, ended 
at last in conquering the country they came to save. 
This invasion is said to have begun about the middle 
of the fifth centu ry. It is more than probable, to be 
sure, that, previous to this time, Teutonic bands had 
made marauding descents upon the coast : it is not 
impossible that they had formed scattered settlements. 
About the end of the fourth century one of the Ro- 
man military officers stationed in Britain was styled 
" Count of the Saxon frontier" {Co7nes Litnitis Saxo- 
nici per Britanniani) ; and his jurisdiction extended 
from the Wash to Southampton. This stretch of coast 
may have been called the Saxon frontier because Sax- 
ons inhabited it : there is little doubt it was so called 
because the Saxons molested it. 

Names of the Teutonic Invading Tribes, 
and Kingdoms founded by them. — The Teu- 
tonic invaders were Low Germans, and belonged to 
three tribes, — the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles. 
According to the dates furnished by the Anglo-Saxon 
chronicle, Hengist and Horsa came over in 449 with 
a body of Jutes, and subsequently founded the king- 
dom of Kent. In 477 ^Ella landed near the present 
city of Chichester, and founded the kingdom of the 



1 8 English Language. 

South Saxons, or Sussex. In 495 Cerdic came over, 
and in 5 1 9 founded the kingdom of the West Saxons, 
or Wessex, which by successive conquests came finally 
to include nearly all South-west England, with a portion 
of the country north of the Thames. There was also 
one other Saxon kingdom, that of the East Saxons, or 
Essex, which seems to have been founded during the 
sixth century. Essex, Wessex, and Sussex were the 
three Saxon monarchies ; and there were likewise three 
kingdoms founded by the Angles, whose collective ter- 
ritory embraced much the larger part of Great Britain, 
but whose origin is wrapped in even deeper obscurity 
than the other. The largest of these was the kingdom 
of Northumbria, which extended from the Humber to 
the Forth. We know nothing of its early history. The 
establishment of its monarchy is ascribed to the year 
547, under which date the Angle- Saxon chronicle 
states that " Ida came to the throne, from whom sprang 
the royal race of the Northumbrians." Besides this, 
there was the kingdom of East Anglia, which included 
the modern Norfolk and Suffolk, and parts of other 
counties. The last Anglian kingdom to be formed was 
that of Mercia, — the " March," or frontier, which in 
process of time came to embrace most of the central 
counties of England. These seven monarchies are 
often popularly but loosely spoken of as the Heptarchy. 
From the above account it is evident that the Teu- 
tonic conquest of Great Britain was chiefly the work 
of two tribes, — the Saxons and the Angles, — and that 
the former settled mainly in the southern part of the 



Roman and Teutonic Conquests. 19 

island ; while the latter occupied the centre and north 
of England and the southern half of Scotland. The 
Angles had a marked superiority, both in their numbers 
and in the extent of territory they occupied. When, 
therefore, any characteristic differences that may have 
originally existed between the tribes began to disap- 
pear, and the two peoples blended in one, it is no 
matter of wonder that the name of the larger body was 
given to the country the two possessed in common. 
Englisc, or English, was the title usually given, after 
the ninth century, to the race and language. Engla- 
land (contracted, England), or "the land of the An- 
gles," came later to be the name applied to the whole 
country from the Channel to the Frith of Forth. But, 
though the Angles were the most numerous, the Saxons 
must have been the first to come into contact with 
the native population, probably through marauding 
descents upon the coasts ; for it was the title which 
the conquered race gave to all the invaders. Even to 
this day, to the Celtic inhabitant of the British Isles, 
whether Cymric or Gaelic, the Englishman is not an 
Englishman, but a Saxon. On the other hand, the 
invaders spoke of the native population sometimes 
as Britons, sometimes as Welsh (A. S. Welisc, Wclsc, 
i foreign,' from A. S. Wealh, a 'foreigner,' from Latin 
Gallic us, ' belonging to Gaul'). 

Rise of the Kingdom of Wessex. — The con- 
quest of the country was no rapid or easy task. The 
native population resisted fiercely, and gave way 
slowly. Every accession of territory was gained at 



20 English Language. 

the cost of hard fighting. Still, under incessant attacks, 
the Britons were steadily, though slowly, pushed back 
towards the western shore of the island ; and at the 
beginning of the ninth century the portion of country 
directly under their sway was limited to the present 
county of Cornwall (West Wales), to the present prin- 
cipality of Wales (North Wales), and to a strip along 
the northern coast of England and southern coast of 
Scotland, which was termed Strathclyde. But the in- 
vaders were not only constantly fighting the original 
Celtic inhabitants, they were as constantly engaged 
in hostilities among themselves. With the accession, 
however, in 802, of Egbert to the throne of Wessex, 
the kingdom of the West Saxons became the ruling 
one, — a supremacy which it never after lost. Before 
the death of that monarch, which took place in 838, 
his authority was acknowledged by all the invaders 
that had settled in Great Britain, and was submitted to 
by the people of West and of North Whales. In the fol- 
lowing century, during the reigns of Edward the Elder 
(901-925) and Athelstan (925-940), the son and 
grandson of Alfred the Great, the power of the house 
of Wessex became permanently established over the 
whole island ; and the kings of that line were recog- 
nized as immediate lords of all the English inhabitants, 
and as superior lords of all the Celtic. At this point 
the Teutonic conquest of Britain may be said to have 
been fully achieved. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE AND LITERA- 
TURE. 

Language of the Teutonic Invaders. — Up 

to the accession of Egbert, the speech of the Teutonic 
invaders of Britain, while everywhere the same essen- 
tially, was broken up into a number of dialects. It is 
not likely that any one of them had any authority out- 
side of its own district : none of them, except, possibly, 
the Northumbrian, possessed a literature. The Latin 
charters of the early kings in several places make dis- 
tinct mention of the dialect of Kent ; but in that no 
literary work was then composed, or, if composed, it 
has not been handed down in its original form. With 
the accession, however, of the royal house of Wessex 
to the rule of Teutonic England, this state of affairs 
underwent a change. Linguistic supremacy, other 
things being equal, is sure to follow political : the 
dialect of Wessex, accordingly, became the cultivated 
language of the whole people, — the language in which 
books were written, and laws were published. During 

21 



22 English Language. 

the reign of Alfred (871-901) it began to develop a 
literature, which, before the Norman conquest, attained 
no slight proportions ; and it is in this West-Saxon 
dialect that nearly all the existing monuments of our 
earliest speech were composed. Still, besides these, 
we have extant a few interlinear glosses written in 
the language of Northumbria, the parent-tongue of the 
present dialects of the north of England and of the 
Scottish Lowlands. 

The language of the Teutonic invaders was origi- 
nally called by them Saxon or English, according as 
they themselves were Saxons or Angles ; and it con- 
tinued, even down to the eleventh century, to be thus 
variously designated in their own Latin writings. Still 
the superiority of the Angles, arising from vastly greater 
numbers, from larger territory, and perhaps from an 
earlier cultivation of literature, survived the decay of 
their political power; and though the kings of the 
West Saxons attained to the supremacy, though the 
West-Saxon dialect became the language of all who 
wrote, the name applied both to the race and the 
tongue was usually Englisc, that is, " English." From 
the ninth century on, it is almost the only term used 
by those who spoke it. When, in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, a revival of the study of our 
early speech took place, it was sometimes called Sax- 
on, sometimes English-Saxon, and sometimes Anglo- 
Saxon ; and the last designation, as recognizing the 
names of the two principal invading tribes, has been 
the one generally adopted. In this work Anglo-Saxon 



Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature. 25 

will be used to mark a period in the history of the 
English language extending from 450 to T150, or 
nearly a century after the Norman conquest; and, 
when employed without limitation, will designate that 
dialect called specifically the West Saxon. As an 
equivalent phrase, " English of the Anglo - Saxon 
period " will also be used. 

Differences between Anglo-Saxon and mod- 
ern English. — Both in grammar and in vocabulary 
Anglo-Saxon differed widely from modern English. It 
was what, in the technical language of grammarians, 
is called a synthetic language ; that is, a language, 
like the Latin, which expresses by changes in the 
form of the words themselves, the modifications of 
meaning they undergo, and their relations to one 
another in the sentence. It had two principal de- 
clensions of the noun, with several subordinate declen- 
sions under one of them * it had two declensions of 
the adjective, according as its substantive was definite 
or indefinite ; it had a distinct form for four cases in 
the substantive ; it had two leading conjugations of 
the verb, with subordinate conjugations under each ; 
and, as a necessary accompaniment of this fulness of 
inflection, it possessed a complicated syntax. On the 
other hand, modern English is what is called an ana- 
lytic tongue. The relations of ideas which were once 
expressed by termination and inflection are now, with 
the disappearance of these, expressed, instead, by the 
use of prepositions and their cases, and by the arrange- 
ment of words in the sentence. Still the grammatical 



24 English Language. 

structure, what there is left of it, is purely Teutonic. 
Even more marked is the difference between the an- 
cient and the modern tongue in the vocabulary. A 
vast number of words belonging to the Anglo-Saxon 
no longer exist for us, even in a changed form : their 
places have been supplied by borrowing from other 
languages, especially Latin and French, to an extent 
which, if vocabulary alone were considered, would 
make it doubtful whether our tongue is Teutonic or 
Romanic. These differences between the earliest and 
modern English are essential differences : they are 
not the characteristics of a development of language, 
but of an actual transformation. Hence has arisen 
the necessity of a special term applied to this period 
of our speech. A nomenclature which, in the history 
of our tongue, includes under one name the English of 
Cadmon and of Tennyson is unsatisfactory and mis- 
leading, — full as much so one which confounds the 
language of Cadmon and of Chaucer. 

Anglo - Saxon Literature. — Poetry. — No 
written literature existed among the Teutonic invaders 
before their conversion to Christianity in the seventh 
century ; and of the two dialects of Anglo-Saxon, the 
West-Saxon and the Northumbrian, the former is the only 
one that has handed down productions of any value. 
In this were composed no small number of works, 
both in prose and poetry. The latter, as in all early 
literatures, was much the most important, and presents 
a marked contrast, alike in character and construction, 
to the verse of later times. Its distinguishing pecul- 



Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature. 25 

iarity, as regards form, was, that it was alliterative ; 
that is to say, it depended, not upon final rhyme, nor 
upon regularity of accent, nor upon the existence of a 
fixed number of syllables in the line, but upon the fact 
that a certain number of the most important words in 
the same line began with the same letter. According 
to the usual, though not invariable, arrangement, two 
important words in the first section of the line, and 
one in the second section, began with the same letter 
(if a consonant), or with vowels, which were not 
required to be the same. Unaccented prefixes were 
not regarded, as the ge in ge-wdt of the following 
illustration of this method of versification : — 

Ge-wat fa ofer ze/seg-holm * ze/inde ge-fysed 
F\oX.& /amig-heals * /ugle gelicost. 

Went then over the sea-wave, wind-impelled, 
The £oat with dow of foam, likest a £ird 

As regards subject, Anglo-Saxon poetry was mainly 
of a religious character, consisting largely of versifica- 
tions of the narratives contained in the Bible, and of 
legends of saints and martyrs. Still its most impor- 
tant work is the epic of Beowulf, which celebrates the 
deeds of a Danish hero of that name ; and, though it 
exists in only a single imperfect manuscript of the 
tenth century, its original composition is generally 
thought to go back to the period before the conversion 
of the people to Christianity. The next most impor- 
tant work is a version of some of the Bible narratives, 
generally attributed to Cadmon, a Northumbrian monk 



26 English La7ignage. 

who flourished in the middle of the seventh century. 
But the work as it now exists is in the West-Saxon 
dialect, and not in that in which it was originally com- 
posed. The whole of Anglo-Saxon poetry which is 
extant amounts to about thirty thousand lines, and a 
large proportion of this has been preserved in two 
volumes. One of them is the Codex Exoniensis ; or, 
Exeter Book, — a collection which is supposed to be 
the one mentioned among the gifts made in the 
eleventh century to St. Peter's monastery in Exeter by 
Bishop Leofric. It is there spoken of as " a large 
English book of various matters composed in song- 
wise " (my eel Englise boe be gehwylcum \ingum on 
leo6wisan geworhf). The other is the Codex Ver- 
cellensis, — a collection found in 1832 at Vercelli in 
Italy. 

Prose. — The language of Anglo-Saxon poetry 
stands at the farthest possible remove from that of 
daily life. It constantly repeats the same ideas in 
slightly varying phrases ; it uses numerous compound 
words peculiar to itself; the construction of its sen- 
tences is often involved and intricate, and the meaning 
in consequence obscure ; and through it all, with a 
certain grandeur, there is joined a certain monotony 
from the little range of thought or expression found in 
it. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon prose is exceed- 
ingly simple in its construction. It may be said to 
begin with King Alfred, who is, indeed, its most promi- 
nent author. Like the poetry, its subject-matter was 
mainly religious, and to a large extent it was made 



Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature. 27 

up of translations from the Latin. Still its most valuable 
monuments were purely original ; one being a collec- 
tion of the laws of various kings, and the other a series 
of annals called "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle/' in 
which the events of each year are recorded under that 
date. Of this work one manuscript extends down to 
the death of King Stephen in 1154. Anglo-Saxon 
prose is of great interest from a linguistic point of 
view : as literature, it is, in general, dull beyond de- 
scription. 

The following specimen of Anglo-Saxon prose is 
taken from the account given to King Alfred by Oh- 
there, one of his Norse subjects, and inserted by the 
former into his translation of the History of Paulus 
Orosius, a Spanish priest of the fifth century. In the 
interlinear gloss the modern forms of the Anglo-Saxon 
words are, when not used, placed between parentheses : 
and some of the words not found or implied in the 
Anglo-Saxon, but employed in the gloss, are placed 
between brackets. The characters ft ]> represent the 
two sounds of th, heard in such words as this, think, 
then, than, death, tithe. 

Ohfere ssede his hlaforde, iElfrede kynincge, ] aet 

Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that 

he ealra NorSmanna norSmest bude. He cwaeS | aet 

he of all Northmen northmost dwelt. He said (quoth) that 

he bude on ];aem lande norSweardum wift fa West-sab. 

he dwelt in the land northward along (with) the West-sea. 

He saede, f>eah, ]>aet ];aet land sy swifie lang nor? fanon ; 

He said, though, that that land is very long north thence; 



28 English Language, 

ac hit is eal weste, butan on feawum stowum, sticcemae- 

but it is all waste, except (but) in a few places, [where] here and 

lum wiciacS Finnas on huntofie on wintra, and on sumera 

there dwell Finns, for (in) hunting in winter, and in summer 

on fiscoSe be p aere sse. He saede paet he, aet sumum 

for (in) fishing along (by) that sea. He said that he, at a certain [some] 

cyrre, wolde fandian hu lange paet land 

time, wished [would] to find out by trial how long the land 

norSrihte laege ; o<5fie hwaeper aenig man be-nor8an 

due north lay; or whether any man north of 

Jsem westene bude. pa for he norSrihte be f sem 

the waste dwelt. Then went (fared) he due north along (by) the 

lande : let him ealne weg £set weste land on fast 

land: [he] left all [the] way the waste land on the 

steorbord, and pa wid-sae on baecbord, fry dagas. 

starboard, and the wide-sea on [the] larboard three days. 

pa waes he swa, feor norS swa pa hwael-huntan fyrrest 

Then was he so far north as the whale-hunters farthest 

faraS. pa for he pa-gyt norSrihte, swa feor 

go (fare). Then went (fared) he still (then-yet) due north, so far 

swa he mihte on paem 6<5rum prim dagum geseglian. 

as he might in the second [other] three days sail 



CHAPTER III. 

INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN TONGUES UPON THE 
ENGLISH OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD. 

Down to the time ofMhe Norman conquest the 
Anglo-Saxon form of the/English language remained 
essentially the same. Trje grammatical modifications, 
in particular, that it underwent, were comparatively few 
in number, and slight in importance. Some inflections 
were lost ; cases originally possessing different endings 
came to have the same ; and the tendency of verbs 
of the strong conjugation to pass over to the weak 
began even thus early to show itself. Still none of 
these changes were violent or extensive : all of them 
took place in accordance with the natural law of 
development. But during this period the language 
came into contact with three^Qlliex-lc^ngues, which to 
some extent affected the vocabulary, and perhaps, also, 
the form of expression. These were, first, the speech 
of the native Celtic inhabitants ; secondly, the Latin ; 
and, thirdly, the Norse. Of these, Latin was the only 
one which at that time added any appreciable num- 

29 



30 English Language. 

ber of words to the language of literature. Terms 
from the Celtic or the Norse may have been adopted 
into the colloquial speech ; but it was not until the 
break-up of the classic Anglo-Saxon, which followed 
the Norman conquest, that they occur to any extent 
in writing. 

Celtic. — The native inhabitants found by the Teu- 
tonic invaders in the part of Britain they overran 
belonged to the Cymric branch of the Celtic stock. 
As the conquest was the work of several hundred 
years, it might be supposed that the vocabulary of each 
people would have received large accessions from that 
of the other ; but such was not the case. Very few 
Celtic terms are found in Anglo-Saxon literature ; and 
not many, indeed, appear to have made their way into 
written English in the centuries immediately following 
the coming of the Norman-French. This was, without 
doubt, due mainly to the little intercourse that pre- 
vailed between the two races and the feelings of 
hatred developed by long years of war. The fact that 
the native inhabitants were Christians, and the in- 
vaders heathen, tended also to widen the breach be- 
tween them ; but, even after the conversion of the 
Anglo-Saxons, religious differences came in to impart 
additional bitterness to the hostility that sprang from 
political and military conflicts. Bede, writing in the 
earlier half of the eighth century, says, that in his day 
it was not the custom of the Britons to pay any respect 
to the faith and religion of the English, nor to corre- 
spond with them any more than with pagans. In 



Celtic Element in English. 31 

consequence, very few of the Celtic words in our 
speech go back to a very early date. Most of them, 
indeed, that came into the language before a com- 
paratively late period, were usually not borrowed di- 
rectly, but apparently went first into Latin or French, 
and from them found their way into English. Thus 
glen, which occurs in our earliest speech, may have 
been borrowed directly from the speech of the 
Britons; but other early, though not Anglo-Saxon 
words, such as basket, bran, brisket, cabin, piece, quay, 
if in all cases of Celtic origin, have in every case 
gone first into the French, and from that tongue have 
been borrowed by us. It is rarely safe, indeed, to 
assert positively that any particular word found in our 
primitive language has been taken from the Celtic ; 
for the derivation is sure to be disputed. Certainly the 
modern importations from that quarter far exceed in 
number the earlier ones. Moreover, they have generally 
come to us from the Gaelic branch, and not from the 
Cymric : and in most cases they denote objects pe- 
culiar, or originally peculiar, to the race by which they 
were first employed. The words bard, brogue, clan, 
druid, plaid, shamrock, whiskey, for illustration, are 
all of Celtic origin ; but none of them go back to the 
Anglo-Saxon period, and most of them are of com- 
paratively recent introduction. In proper names, 
whether of persons or places, Celtic terms are naturally 
much more common. There is an old English saying 
which runs as follows ; — 



32 English Language. 

By Tre, 1 Ros, 2 Pol, 3 Lan, 4 Caer, 5 and Pen 6 
You know the most of Cornish men. 

And these prefixes and several others are still numerous 
in names of persons and places. 

It is to be added, that the influence of Celtic upon 
English has never been made the subject of thorough 
scientific investigation. Extravagant claims have been 
and are still put forth as to the extent of this element 
in our tongue. In particular, long lists of English 
words have been often given as derived from Celtic 
ones more or less resembling them. These lists are, 
as a general rule, utterly untrustworthy. In many 
instances there is no relationship whatever between the 
words compared ; in other instances the relationship 
is due to the fact that the same word has come down 
from the primitive Indo-European to both the Celtic 
and Teutonic branches ; and in other instances still, 
where there has been actual borrowing, it is the Celtic 
tongues that have borrowed from the English, and not 
the English from the Celtic. At best, the influence of 
the languages of this stock upon our speech has been 
slight. 

Latin. — Far greater, even as regards Anglo-Saxon, 
was the influence of the Latin. This first manifested 
itself in the seventh century, and was due, like most 
other changes in the vocabulary, to the operation of 
causes not in themselves of a linguistic nature. In the 

1 A place or dwelling. 

2 Cymric rhos, a moor; Gaelic ros. a headland. 3 A marsh, pool. 
4 An enclosure, church. 5 A cairn; or, from Lat. castra, a camp. 
6 A mountain; in Gaelic, ben. 



Latin Element in Anglo-Saxon. 33 

year 597 a band of Roman missionaries, sent by Pope 
Gregory I., came, under the leadership of Augustine, 
to the kingdom of Kent, with the object of converting 
the people. Their efforts were successful ; and by the 
end of the following century all of the Teutonic in- 
habitants of Britain had gone over from heathenism 
to the Christian faith. One immediate consequence 
was to bring into prominence and power in the coun- 
try a body of ecclesiastics who not only carried on the 
church-service in Latin, but were in the habit of using 
that language largely in conversation and in writing. 
For the first time in its history, Teutonic Britain was 
brought into contact with the superior literature and 
civilization of the Continent. The inevitable result 
was to introduce into the Anglo-Saxon a number of 
words taken from the Latin. At first these were natu- 
rally connected with the church-service, or with eccle- 
siastical proceedings \ but, as time went on, a variety 
of terms came in, denoting objects in no way con- 
nected with religion. 

As the influence of Celtic in this early period has 
been overrated by many, that of Latin has been under- 
rated by most. The words borrowed from it were not 
only considerable in number, they were, to a great 
extent, thoroughly assimilated. From the Latin nouns 
introduced, new adjectives and verbs and adverbs were 
formed by the addition of Teutonic endings ; as from 
cue, 'cook' (from Lat. eoquus), was formed the verb 
eueean, i to cook \ ' from regol, ' rule ' (from Lat. 
reguld), were formed the adjective regollic, 'rule- 



34 English Language. 

like/ ' regular/ and the adverb regollice, ' regularly/ 
The new words also were used with perfect freedom 
to form compounds with the native ones ; as, for in- 
stance, biscop, ' bishop ' (from Lat. episcopus) , enters 
into composition with more than a dozen Anglo-Saxon 
ones, of which list bis cop-rice, ' bishopric/ will serve 
as an illustration. In fact, all the results that take 
place now when words from one tongue are brought 
in large numbers into another can be found exem- 
plified in the influence of Latin upon the English of 
this early period. Some of the native words began 
to disappear entirely ; thus, fefor, ' fever ' (from Lat. 
febris) , drove out hrifte, the original word denoting 
that disease. Again : the borrowed and the native 
words would frequently stand side by side ; thus, in 
King Alfred's writings, as well as later ones, munt, 
' mount ' (from Lat. mons, mont-is) , is used inter- 
changeably with dun, the present ' down/ and beorg, 
seen in our ' iceberg.' Before the Norman conquest 
six hundred words at least had been introduced from 
Latin into the Anglo-Saxon ; some of them occurring 
but once or twice in the literature handed down, others 
met with frequently. Were we to include in this list 
of borrowed terms the compounds into which the 
borrowed terms enter, the whole number would be 
swelled to three or four times that above given. It is 
also to be marked, that not only were nouns directly 
borrowed, but also adjectives and verbs, though to a 
far less extent. The words that came into Anglo-Saxon 
from the seventh century on constitute the first real 



Scandinavian Element in English. 35 

introduction of the Latin element into our tongue ; 
but, in accordance with the terminology generally 
adopted, it is styled "Latin of the Second Period." 

Scandinavian. — The extent of this Latin influ- 
ence upon Anglo-Saxon is something that is capable 
of pretty definite determination ; but such is not the 
case with the Scandinavian element that comes now 
to be considered. The descendants of the Teutonic 
invaders, not much more than a century after their 
conversion to Christianity, were to suffer the same evils 
that had been inflicted by their own heathen free- 
booting forefathers upon the original Celtic popula- 
tion. Under the year 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
states, that in the days of Bertric, King of Wessex, 
three shiploads of Northmen landed upon the coast 
of Britain, and slew the officers who went out to meet 
them with the intent of taking them prisoners. 
"These," it continues, "were the first ships of Danish 
men who sought the land of the English race." This 
event marks the beginning of a steadily increasing 
series of marauding descents upon the seaboard, and 
inroads into the interior, which, in the latter part of 
the ninth century, culminated in the devastation or 
subjection of nearly all the Anglo-Saxon territory, and 
the permanent settlement of a large part of it. East 
Anglia was conquered in 870, and became and thence- 
forward remained a Danish kingdom. The invaders 
also overran or subdued the greater portion of what is 
now Northern and Eastern England. Their attempts 
upon Wessex were finally, however, effectually checked 



36 English Language. 

by the defeat they received from King Alfred at Eding- 
ton, in Wiltshire, in 870. This was followed by the 
Peace of Wedmore, in accordance with which the 
whole country was divided between the two nations ; 
the Danes on their part agreeing to adopt the Chris- 
tian faith. Even after this, incursions continued to be 
made ; and toward the close of the tenth century the 
invasion was renewed on a grander scale. It ended in 
establishing upon the English throne, from 1013 to 
1042, a Danish dynasty, to which belonged Sweyn, 
Canute, Harold Harefoot, and Hardicanute. But in 
every case the new-comers seem to have made no 
effort to keep up their own tongue, but adopted the 
speech of the people among whom they had fixed 
their homes. The Scandinavian settlements are, for 
the most part, limited to East Anglia (Norfolk and 
Suffolk), to Lincolnshire and the neighboring counties 
on the west, to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, 
and Cumberland. Their existence is generally con- 
ceded to be indicated by various names of towns, of 
which those ending in -by (Old Norse byr, a ' dwelling/ 
' village'), in -thorp or -torp (O. N. ]>orp, a 'hamlet/ 
'village '), in -toft (O. N. toft, a 'homestead/ 'enclos- 
ure '), and in -thwaite (O. N. \>veiti, a 'clearing'), are 
among the most common. Examples of these can be 
seen in Whitby, Althorp, Lowestoft, and Braithwaite. 

There was, accordingly, no slight infusion of the 
Scandinavian element in the population that inhabited 
Britain. But the extent of Scandinavian influence 
upon the language is difficult to ascertain for the fol- 



Scandinavian Element in English. 37 

lowing reasons : the Old Norse and the Anglo-Saxon 
are both Teutonic tongues ; they both descended from 
a common ancestor. A large number of words were 
the same, or nearly the same, in both. It is not con- 
ceivable that all the vocabulary possessed by either has 
been handed down in the literature of each that has 
been saved. When, therefore, a word occurs in mod- 
ern English which is not found in Anglo-Saxon, or any 
other Low German tongue, but is found in Old Norse, 
we can say that there is every probability that it came 
from the latter ; but we cannot say this with certainty, 
for it may have existed in the former, and not have 
been preserved. There is, moreover, a special diffi- 
culty in this question, from the fact that it was in the 
Anglian kingdoms that these foreign settlements were 
made. Now, the existing remains of Northumbrian 
speech, which is an Anglian dialect of the Anglo- 
Saxon, show plainly that this dialect was much closer 
allied to the Old Norse than is the West-Saxon, which 
is a Saxon dialect of Anglo-Saxon. In the last-named 
the infinitive of the verb, for illustration, regularly 
ends in -a,7i ; while in the other two the n is entirely 
or occasionally dropped. In West-Saxon c to tell ' is 
tellan ; in Northumbrian it is tellan or tella ; in Norse 
it is telia. It is, therefore, quite conceivable, though it 
may not be very probable, that words and forms which 
we ascribe to the Scandinavian element may, in fact, 
have not come from it, but from the speech of the 
Anglian population \ for we have no such extensive 
vocabulary of the Northumbrian dialect as we have of 
the West-Saxon. 



38 English Language. 

Still there is no doubt that a large number of Norse 
words were introduced at this time into the spoken 
tongue ; and many of these have spread beyond their 
original limits, and linger to this day in all the local 
dialects of Northern England and Southern Scotland. 
In these, indeed, this foreign element is far more con- 
spicuous than in the language of literature. Still, in 
regard to the latter also, it is reasonable to suppose 
that the Norse words, and meanings of words, in many 
cases, have supplanted those, which, up to the time of 
its introduction, had been the prevailing or exclusive 
ones in Anglo-Saxon. For illustration, sindon was the 
ordinary form for the plural of the present tense of 
the verb be : its place is now supplied by are, the 
original of which is rare in Anglo-Saxon, but the 
regular form in the Norse. So from the Norse kalla 
we seem to get our verb call; for in Anglo-Saxon 
the corresponding word is clipian, 'to clepe.' Again : 
the word dream is common to both tongues ; but in 
Anglo-Saxon it means ' joy/ ' music ; ' and it is from 
the Norse that we have taken the modern signification. 
Still it was not till the break-up of the native speech, 
that followed upon the Norman conquest, that Norse 
words came to be used to any extent in the language 
of literature. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND THE FRENCH 
LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND. 

Up to the middle of the eleventh century the in- 
fluences that had been at work upon the language had 
not been productive of great changes ; still less were 
they revolutionary in their nature. The Norsemen for 
a time brought ruin everywhere ; but whether they 
desolated temporarily, or settled permanently, they 
did not anywhere materially disturb the native speech 
as an instrument of communication, or affect in the 
slightest its literary supremacy. Even during the time 
they ruled the country, they seem not to have made 
any effort to introduce into it the use of their own 
tongue. But a series of events was now to take place 
which completely changed the future political history 
of the English people ; and it was attended by as pro- 
found and wide-reaching a change in the character of 
English speech. In the latter half of the eleventh 
century came the Norman conquest and the introduc- 
tion into the island of the French as the language of 

39 



40 English Language. 

the higher classes. The most powerful effects pro- 
duced by these upon the native tongue did not fully 
show themselves until three centuries had passed ; but 
a very early and almost immediate effect wrought 
upon it was to throw it into a state of confusion. The 
English of the Anglo-Saxon period sank at once from 
its position as the language of culture, whatever that 
culture was ; and when, in the fourteenth century, it 
once more re-appears as the language of classic litera- 
ture, it is a language and literature widely different 
from that which had been supplanted or degraded by 
the coming of a stranger race. From the Norman 
conquest on, the native speech no longer followed the 
natural law of development which it would have fol- 
lowed as a pure Teutonic tongue. 

To explain the nature of the changes that were 
wrought in it, it will be necessary to give some account 
of the men whose coming caused them, and of the 
relations which for a long time existed on English soil 
between the French and English languages. 

The Norman-French, — Toward the close of 
the ninth century a band of Northmen, under a re- 
nowned leader named Rolf, or Rollo, sailed up the 
Seine, captured Rouen, and, from that point as a cen- 
tre, carried on a continuous and destructive war with 
the native inhabitants. At last, in 912, peace was made. 
To the invaders, Charles the Simple, the King of the 
French, ceded a large territory bordering upon the 
British Channel, which was called from them Nor- 
mandy. On the other hand, Rollo agreed to become 



The Norman Conquest. 41 

the feudal vassal of the French monarch, and to em- 
brace the Christian religion. These conditions were 
fully carried into effect ; and the Northmen became the 
undisturbed owners of the district given up to them, 
and, along with the religion of their subjects, they also 
adopted their language. 

The Norman Conquest. — The relations be- 
tween the English and the Norman-French began to 
assume about the beginning of the eleventh century a 
somewhat close character by the marriage, in 1002, of 
the Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred II., to Emma, sister of 
Richard III., the fifth duke of Normandy. One fruit 
of this union was a son, Edward, usually styled the 
Confessor, who reigned over England from 1043 to 
1066. But the early years of this prince were spent 
at the court of his uncles Richard and Robert, dukes 
of Normandy ; and when, after the termination of the 
Danish dynasty in 1042, he was recalled to his native 
country, and placed upon the throne, he continued to 
retain a preference for the friends and the tastes of 
his youth. Norman-French noblemen were assigned 
positions of responsibility and power ; Norman-French 
priests were made English bishops ; and, though a rev- 
olution in 1052 drove out most of the foreign favorites, 
the foreign influence could not have passed away 
utterly. Early in 1066 Edward the Confessor died; 
and Harold, the most powerful nobleman in the king- 
dom, was chosen king in his stead. But a claim to 
the throne was immediately made by William, Duke 
of Normandy, a cousin of the deceased monarch. To 



/ 



42 English Language. 

support it, he invaded England in the autumn of the 
same year ; and the battle of Hastings, fought on the 
14th of October, 1066, resulted in the defeat and 
death of Harold and the subjection of the whole 
country. 

Effect of the Conquest upon the Native 
Language. — Two general facts in regard to language 
are at once apparent as the effect of the conquest. 
One is, that, though the native tongue continued to 
be spoken by the great majority of the population, it 
went out of use as the language of high culture. It 
was no longer taught in the schools ; it was no longer 
employed at the court of the king, or the castles of 
the nobles, or in the services of the church. This dis- 
placement was probably slow at first ; but it was done 
effectually at last. The second fact is, that, from the 
first, the higher classes, both lay and ecclesiastical, that 
came in with the conquest, used either Latin or French ; 
the latter, in process of time, growing more and more 
to be the language, not alone of polite society, but of 
literature. We have, in consequence, the singular 
spectacle of two tongues flourishing side by side in the 
same country, and yet for centuries so utterly distinct 
and independent, that neither can be said to have 
exerted much direct appreciable influence upon the 
other, though in each case the indirect influence was 
great. To understand the relations between these 
two tongues involves an acquaintance with the rela- 
tions existing between the two races that spoke them ; 
and in both cases the knowledge we have, especially 



The Norman Conquest. 43 

of the earlier period, is obscure. Our information, 
indeed, in regard to our speech, is based almost 
exclusively upon incidental notices contained in the 
Latin chronicles written in the twelfth century and in 
the beginning of the thirteenth ; and as in these the 
subject of language is rarely treated of , specifically, 
and never at any length, the inferences that are drawn 
can only be looked upon as probable, and not as cer- 
tain. From the latter part of the thirteenth century 
on, the native tongue is more an object of considera- 
tion in itself, and our knowledge of the relations be- 
tween French and English becomes far more positive 
and precise. A few of the more important statements 
will be quoted ; but in every case it is necessary to 
bear in mind, not only what was said, but when it was 
said. 

Up to a comparatively late period, the History which 
purported to be written by Ingulph, appointed Abbot 
of Croyland in 1076, was regarded as authentic, and 
its statements were implicitly credited. In this work 
it was asserted, that, after the accession of William, the 
English race was held in contempt and detestation ; 
that the Normans so abhorred the language, that the 
laws of the land and the decrees of the king were put 
into Latin ; and that in the schools the elements of 
grammar were imparted in French. Though this His- 
tory was professedly the production of a contemporary 
of the Conqueror, there is no doubt that much, if not 
all, of it, was a forgery of several centuries later. Its 
statements can therefore have no further weight than 



44 English Language. 

would belong to writings of that later period ; that is, 
really none at all. Nevertheless, there is satisfactory 
evidence that contempt was both felt and expressed by 
the foreigners for the native population, — * a contempt 
which was naturally extended to the language. Henry 
of Huntingdon, who flourished in the former half of 
the twelfth century, in speaking of the state of the 
country at the death of William the Conqueror, as- 
serted that it was a disgrace to be even called an 
Englishman. About the beginning of the thirteenth 
century Gervase, who was born at Tilbury in Essex, 
but entered the service of the Emperor of Germany, 
wrote, among other things, an account of his native 
land. In this, while speaking of Harold, the last of 
the Anglo-Saxon kings, he stated that it was then the 
custom of the noblest of the English to have their sons 
educated among the French for the sake of gaining 
proficiency in arms and for the purpose of removing 
the barbarism of the native language. While this as- 
sertion is of not the slightest value as evidence of the 
state of affairs in the time of Edward the Confessor, it 
is of value as to the state of opinion in the time of 
King John. The tongue of the common people was, 
in truth, in the eyes of the Norman a barbarous one. 
He made not the slightest attempt to destroy it : he 
contented himself with simply despising it. To him it 
was the rude speech of a rude people which had been 
subjected to the sway of a superior race. 

French and English Languages on English 
soil. — English, indeed, after the conquest, did not 



French and English in England. 45 

cease to be a written language : it did cease to be a 
cultivated one. None of those conservative influences 
were cast about it which are sure to prevent rapid and 
radical changes in any tongue that is regularly em- 
ployed by the educated. But the great body of the 
people clung to it. They were ignorant, and they cor- 
rupted it ; but, as they could not or would not learn 
the language of the higher classes, they preserved it. 
While French, therefore, continued to remain for cen- 
turies the tongue employed in polite conversation, 
while it and Latin were the ones mainly employed in 
literature, the native speech could not fail, as time 
went on, to make its influence more and more felt by 
the mere weight of numbers on the part of those 
using it. There is a general impression that the no- 
bility did not learn to speak English till the fourteenth 
century ; and this may be true to this extent, that the 
subjects of the English king who were born on the 
Continent, and spent there most of their lives, never 
learned to speak it at all. But it is against all proba- 
bility that those members of the higher classes who 
were brought up in the island, whose interests mainly 
lay there, whose lives were largely passed there, should 
not have been able to understand and make use of the 
speech of the great body of the common people with 
whom they came into daily contact. From the very 
first, necessity would have forced them at times to 
employ English, though French were the language of 
their choice. This view is borne out by numerous in- 
cidental references to the subject which have been 



46 English Language. 

handed down. In particular, ignorance of English on 
the part of the clergy came to be regarded as a serious 
objection. The historian Matthew of Paris, who 
flourished during the reign of Henry III. (1216- 
1272), relates that Sewal, Archbishop of York, who 
died in 1258, wrote a letter of remonstrance to the 
Pope, complaining of the way in which he had been 
harassed by suspensions, examinations, and in other 
ways, because he refused to accept of inexperienced 
persons recommended by the pontiff to benefices, on 
the ground that they were ignorant of the English 
language. One of the chief reasons of the unpopu- 
larity of Henry III. was his preference for favorites 
who came from his dominions on the Continent ; and 
the writer of the chronicle which goes under the name 
of Matthew of Westminster's, in giving an account of 
the events which took place in 1263, during the civil 
war between the barons and that monarch, states that 
whoever was unable to speak the English language was 
regarded by the common people as a vile and con- 
temptible person. If this assertion be true, there is no 
escape from the legitimate inference that the nobility 
whose homes were in the island must have been 
familiar with the native speech. 
# / Rise in Importance of the English. — But as 
it was political events that had brought about the 
degradation of the English language, so it was to 
political events that its gradual rise in importance 
and estimation was mainly due. The continued, and 
within certain limits probably increasing, use of the 



French and E?iglisk in England. 47 

French speech on the soil of Great Britain, lay largely 
in the fact that it was likewise the speech of a vast 
population on the Continent who were subject to the 
same ruler as the islanders. The possessions of Henry 
II., for instance, embraced full half of what is now 
France, and far exceeded in extent the territory under 
the direct control of the French monarch himself. So 
long as this state of things lasted, an uncultivated 
tongue like the English was at an immense disadvan- 
tage as compared with a cultivated one existing along- 
side of it. Even the island itself was, to a great de- 
gree, simply looked upon as a storehouse of men and 
materials, from which its kings could draw supplies to 
prosecute their designs of conquest upon the Conti- 
nent ; and the language itself could not hope to be 
rated at as high a value as the country in which it was 
the speech of the lower classes only. But during the 
thirteenth century events occurred that changed the 
condition of affairs. Chief among these was the 
gradual loss of the possessions held by the English 
kings in France, and, in particular, the loss of Nor- 
mandy in 1204, during the reign of John. This had 
the inevitable effect of largely transferring the interests 
of the nobility from the Continent to the Island. 
Henceforth their lot was to be cast amid the English- 
speaking race that dwelt upon the estates held by 
them in England. The breach which naturally arose, 
in consequence, between the people of the Island and 
of the Continent, was still further widened by the 
action taken in 1244 by the French king, Louis IX. 



48 English Language. 

In that year he summoned to Paris all the nobility of 
England who had possessions in France, and gave 
them their choice of relinquishing their property in 
the one country or the other, because it was impos- 
sible for the same man to be the subject of two rulers, 
always in rivalry, and often in hostility. They were, 
accordingly, obliged to give up one or the other. As 
soon as the knowledge of this transaction came to the 
ears of the English king, he at once ordered that all 
Frenchmen, especially Normans, who had possessions 
in England, should be deprived of their property. 

The necessary effect of these political changes was 
first to cause the English and the French to look upon 
each other more and more as different peoples ; 
secondly, to hasten the union between the English of 
native and of foreign descent, and to wipe out distinc- 
tions of any kind heretofore existing between them. 
Yet it is clear that there could never be a complete 
union without the adoption of a common language ; 
and, in spite of these events, this had not yet taken 
place at the end of the thirteenth century. On this 
point we have the direct and unimpeachable testimony 
of a contemporary writer, which, though often quoted, 
is too important to be passed over here. Robert of 
Gloucester, a monk who flourished in the latter half 
of the thirteenth century, wrote a rhymed chronicle of 
Britain and England, down to the year 1272. In 
giving an account of the conquest by William, he is 
led to speak of the two languages still existing in the 



French and English 171 England. 49 

country side by side, and this he does in the following 
words : — 

Thus com, lo ! Engelond into Normandies hond. 

And the Normans ne couthe speke tho bote hor owe speche, 

And speke French as hii dude atom and hor children dude 

also teche. 
So that heiemen of this lond, that of hor blod come, 
Holdeth alle thulke speche that hii of horn nome. 
Vor bote a man conne Frenss, me telth of him lute ; 
Ac lowe men holdeth to Engliss and to hor owe speche yute. 
Ich wene ther ne beth in al the world contreyes none 
That ne holdeth to hor owe speche bote Engelond one. 1 

From this it is evident that French was still the 
language of the higher classes, and that to be ignorant 
of it was in a measure a social stigma. Nor did this 
feeling speedily die out. In the earlier half of the 
following century Ralph Higden, a monk of St. Wer- 
burgh's, in Chester, wrote in Latin a chronicle of the 
world, under the title of " Polychronicon ; " and in it 
he gave an account of the languages spoken in Eng- 
land, and of the corruption that had crept into the 
native speech. A translation of this work was com- 
pleted in 1387, by John of Trevisa, vicar of Berkeley; 



Lo ! thus came England into the possession of Normandy. 
And the Normans could then speak only their own speech, 
And spoke French as they did at home, and caused their children also to 

be taught it. 
So that noblemen of this land, that come of their blood, 
Hold all the same speech that they from them received. 
For unless a man knows French, he is little thought of; 
But low men keep to English, and to their own speech yet. 
I think there be not in all the world any countries 
That do not hold to their own speech but England alone. 



50 English Language. 

and the passage explanatory of the corruption that had 
overtaken the tongue he rendered in the following 
words : — 

This apeyryng of the burth-tonge ys bycause of twey 
thinges : — on ys, for chyldern in scole, agenes the vsage and 
manere of al other nacions, buth compelled for to leue here oune 
longage, and for to construe here lessons and here thinges a 
Freynsch, and habbeth, suththe the Normans come furst into 
Engelond. Also gentil men children buth ytaught for to speke 
Freynsch fram tyme that a buth yrokked in here cradel, and 
conneth speke, and playe with a child hys brouch ; and oplon- 
dysch men wol lykne ham-sylf to gentil men, and fondeth with 
gret bysynes for to speke Freynsch, for to be more ytold of. 1 

Such was the state of things in the former part of 
the fourteenth century. But by the middle of that 
century the movement toward the general adoption of 
the native speech had acquired a momentum which 
could no longer be resisted. From this period, signs 
of the employment of English by all classes in the 
community begin to multiply. Traditions connected 
with education are among the last to lose their hold 
upon the mind : practices connected with it are 
among the last to be abandoned. But, in the latter 
half of the fourteenth century, instruction through the 

1 This impairing of the birth-tongue is because of two things: one is, 
because children in school, against the usage and manner of all other nations, 
are compelled to leave their own language, and to construe their lessons and 
their matters in French, and have, since the Normans came first into England. 
Also, gentlemen's children are taught to speak French from (the) time that 
they are rocked in their cradle, and can speak, and play with a child's brooch ; 
and back-country men (or rustics) wish to make themselves like gentlemen, 
and strive with great earnestness to speak French, in order to be thought the 
more of. 



French and English in England. 51 

medium of the French had to a great extent been 
supplanted by instruction through the medium of the 
English. Here, again, we have positive testimony. 
John of Trevisa, to his version, which has just been 
given, of Higden's account, added a correction of his 
statements, which was rendered necessary by the 
changes that had taken place between the time the 
book was written and the time it was translated. He 
asserted, that, since the great pestilence of 1349, the 
system of instruction had been revolutionized. Upon 
the remark of his author that the children of the 
higher classes were taught French from their cradles, 
he makes the following comment : — 

Thys manere was moche yvsed tofore the furste moreyn, 
and ys seththe somdel ychaunged. For Iohan Cornwal, a 
mayster of gramere, chayngede the lore in gramer-scole, and 
construccion of Freynsch into Englysch; and Richard Pen- 
crych lurnede that manere techyng of hym, and other men of 
Pencrych ; so that now, the yer of oure Lord a thousond thre 
hondred foure score and fyue, of the secunde Kyng Richard 
after the conquest nyne, in al the gramer-scoles of Engelond 
childern leueth Frensch and construeth and lurneth an Eng- 
lysch, and habbeth therby avauntage in on syde and desavauntage 
yn another : here avauntage ys, that a lurneth here gramer yn 
lasse tyme than childern wer ywoned to do ; disavauntage ys, 
that now childern of gramer-scole conneth no more Frensch 
than can here lift heele, and that ys harm for ham, and a 
scholle passe the se and trauayle in strange londes, and in 
meny caas also. Also gentil men habbeth now moche yleft for 
to teche here childern Frensch. 1 

1 This custom was much used before the first pestilence, and is since 
somewhat changed. For John Cornwall, a teacher of grammar, changed 
the method of instruction in the grammar-school, and (the) construing from 






52 English Language. 

Doubtless this inevitable change was looked upon 
by many with much disfavor. The growing ignorance 
of a tongue which was widely used throughout Chris- 
tendom, and seemed to have before it a great future, 
was regarded almost in the light of a calamity. 
Trevisa's remark, that the children in the grammar- 
schools knew " no more French than their left heel,' , 
was re-echoed in the alliterative poem of " Piers Plough- 
man," by Langlande, who is, in theory at least, sup- 
posed to represent the sentiments of the common 
people. In a passage inveighing against the general 
ignorance prevalent in his day, he says, — 

Gramer, the grounde of all, bi-gyleth now children ; 
For is none of this nevve clerkes, whoso nymeth hede, 
That can versifye faire, ne formalich enditen ; 
Ne nought on amonge an hundreth, that an auctour can con- 
strue, 
Ne rede a lettre in any langage but in Latyn or in Englissh. 1 

French into English; and Richard Pencrich learned from him that manner of 
teaching, and other men from Pencrich: so that now, the year of our Lord 
a thousand three hundred four score and five, the ninth (year of the reign) of 
the second king Richard after the conquest, in all the grammar-schools of 
England children give up French, and construe and learn in English, and 
have thereby advantage on one side, and disadvantage on another. Their 
advantage is, that they learn their grammar in less time than children were 
wont to do; (the) disadvantage is, that now grammar-school children know 
no more French than their left heel knows: and that is harm for them, if they 
shall pass the sea and travel in strange lands, and in many (other) cases also. 
Also, gentlemen have now much left teaching their children French." 
1 Grammar, the ground of all (studies), now leads astray children; 
For there is no one of these new clerks, whoso taketh heed, 
That can versify fairly, or compose in established form; 2 
And not one amongst an hundred that can construe an author, 
Nor read a letter in any language but in Latin or in English. 

2 Either in prose ? or alliterative verse ? 



French and English in England. 53 

Yet, in fact, this kind of instruction in French was 
far from being utterly abandoned at that period. Even 
as late as the reign of Henry VIII. , at the time of the 
dissolution of the monasteries, it was still found taught 
in the conventual schools, — at any rate, in one case. 
A letter to Cromwell from John Ap Rice, one of the 
visitors of religious houses, relating to the monastery 
of Laycock in Wiltshire, mentions a form of French 
as still being used there which was certainly then used 
by no people to whom that tongue was a native speech. 
"The house," he says, "is very clean, well-repaired, 
and well-ordered : and one thing I observed worthy 
the advertisement (i.e. notice) there. The Ladies have 
their Rule, the Institutes of their Religion, and the 
ceremonies of the same written in the French tongue, 
which they understand well, and are very perfitt in the 
same. Albeit that it varieth from the vulgar French 
that is now used, and is much like the French that 
the Common Law is written in." 

But more convincing evidence even than the change 
in the method of instruction in the schools, as to the 
general adoption of English by all classes, can be found 
in the act in regard to the pleadings in the law- 
courts, which was passed by the Parliament held at 
Westminster in 1362, the thirty-sixth year of Edward 
III. The preamble recites in full the reasons which 
led to the making of the statute \ and, in spite of the 
verbiage usual in documents of this kind, most of it 
is well worthy quotation. " Because it is often shewed 
to the king," it said, "by the prelates, dukes, earls, 



54 English Language. 

barons, and all the commonalty, of the great mischiefs 
which have happened to divers of the realm, because 
the laws, customs, and statutes of this realm be not 
commonly known in the same realm, for that they 
be pleaded, showed, and judged in the French tongue, 
which is much unknown in the said realm : so that the 
people who do implead or be impleaded in the king's 
court, and in the courts of others, have no knowledge 
nor understanding of that which is said for them or 
against them by their Serjeants and other pleaders ; 
and that reasonably the said laws and customs shall be 
the sooner learned and known and better understood 
in the tongue used in the said realm, and by so much 
every man of the said realm may the better govern 
himself without offending of the law, and the better 
keep, save, and defend his heritage and possessions ; 
and in divers regions and countries, where the king, 
the nobles, and others of the said realm have been, 
good governance and full right is done to every per- 
son, because that their laws and customs be learned 
and used in the tongue of the country : the king, 
desiring the good governance and tranquillity of his 
people, and to put out and eschew the harms and 
mischiefs, which do or may happen in this behalf by 
the occasions aforesaid, hath ordained and established 
by the assent aforesaid, that all pleas which shall be 
pleaded in his courts whatsoever, before any of his 
justices whatsoever, or in his other places, or before 
any of his other ministers whatsoever, or in the courts 
and places of any other lords whatsoever within the 



Rise of Modern English Literature. 55 

realm, shall be pleaded, shewed, defended, answered, 
debated, and judged in the English tongue. " This law 
went into operation at the beginning of the following 
vear. It is a natural inference, from the half-measures 
attending this one piece of legislation, that the English 
element had become predominant, not .only in the 
national speech, but in the national character. In 
curious contrast with some of the declarations of the 
preamble, the statute was published in the very language 
it proscribed ; and, while it enacted that the pleadings 
should be in the English tongue, it went on to declare 
that they should be enrolled in Latin. 

Rise of Modern Epglish Literature. — While 
this steady rise in the use and estimation of the popular 
speech was, in its origin, mainly due to the loss of the 
English possessions on the Continent, two other causes 
now came in to still further accelerate a movement 
which political changes had begun. One of these was 
the creation of a native literature of a character which 
contributed of itself to give respect and dignity to the 
tongue in which it was written. The second was the va- 
riation, steadily widening, which showed itself between 
the French spoken in the Island and the French 
spoken on the Continent ; and this, from the very 
nature of things, could not but react upon the esti- 
mation in which the former was held. 

It was in the fourteenth century that the forces which 
give stability and credit to a language began first to 
operate powerfully upon the speech employed by the 
great body of the people. It was in the latter half of 



56 EnglisJi Language. 

that century that English literature, in the strict sense 
of the word literature, properly begins. Numerous 
works had, indeed, been written between the conquest 
and this period \ but, with the exception of some few 
specimens of lyric poetry, there had been nothing 
produced, which, looked at from a purely literary point 
of view, had any reason to show for its existence. If 
known to the cultivated classes at all, it was probably 
treated with contempt ; for it was certainly contempti- 
ble in execution, whatever it may have been in design. 
The men who, during those centuries, wrote in English, 
seem to have done so in most cases because they had 
not the knowledge or the ability to write in Latin or 
in French. To a very large extent, their works were 
translations. Compositions on dull subjects, and which 
themselves imparted additional dulness to the subjects 
of which they treated, could not, and as an actual 
fact did not, have any influence worth speaking of on 
the development of the native speech. They are fre- , 
quently of great value to us when looked at from 
certain points of view : they are records of new words 
and phrases that had come in, of grammatical changes 
that had taken place, of linguistic influences of every 
kind that had been and still were at work ; but upon 
the speech of the people of that time they exercised 
no perceptible influence. Both in language and in 
literature men imitate only what they admire ; and the 
works produced in English for nearly three centuries 
following the conquest could not, in the vast majority 
of instances, be admired. 



Rise of Mcdcm English Literature. 57 

But in the latter half of the fourteenth century a 
number of eminent writers in the native speech arose. 
Sir John Mandeville, after giving in Latin an account 
of his travels, and turning this into French, translated it 
again out of French into English about the year 1356 ; 
and the work is entertaining reading at this day. A 
few years later Langlande executed the first version of 
his famous alliterative poem, " The Vision of Piers 
Plowman/' which was widely circulated. Toward the 
close of the century, Gower, after composing works in 
Latin and French, tried writing in English also, at 
the request, as he tells us, of King Richard II. But 
the two great authors of this time are Wycliffe and 
Chaucer ; and their influence upon the language can 
not well be over-estimated. To the translation of the 
Scriptures, completed about 1380 by the former and 
his disciples, we owe that peculiar religious dialect, 
alike remarkable for simplicity, for beauty, and for 
force, which we still see preserved in the more modern 
versions of the Bible, and which renders the prose of 
that work distinct from every other existing form of 
English prose. It is only through this translation that 
Wycliffe can be said to have exerted a lasting influ- 
ence upon our tongue. But what he did for the lan- 
guage of religion, Chaucer did for the language of 
literature. In his works men for the first time had 
great models in the native speech ; and the dialect in 
which he wrote became the one universally employed 
in literature, largely in consequence of his writing in 
it. His genius it was that gave dignity to the speech 



58 English Language. 

in which it found manifestation. But in nothing is his 
foresight and wisdom more conspicuous than in the 
fact that he was the first man of learning to perceive 
the resources of the English language and the im- 
propriety and gross folly of Englishmen writing in any 
other. He was, for his time, a great scholar ; and his 
choice of his native tongue was not, like WyclirTe's, 
dictated by a desire to reach and affect through it all 
classes in the community, but by a profound con- 
fidence, not only in the power of expression it pos- 
sessed, but in the future that lay before it. Nor was 
the authority of his name and example in this respect 
unnecessary. He died in 1400 ; and, for more than 
a century after his death, it was still a venturesome 
undertaking for an Englishman to write in English if 
he could write in Latin. A hundred and fifty years 
later, Roger Ascham, one of the greatest scholars of 
his age, wrote a book entitled "Toxophilus," first 
published in 1545. In his dedication of the work to 
the gentlemen and yeomen of his native land, he felt 
it necessary to apologize for having written it in the 
native speech. " If any man would blame me," said 
he, " either for taking such a matter in hand, or else 
for writing it in the English tongue, this answer I may 
make him : that, what the best of the realm think it 
honest for them to use, I, one of the meanest sort, ought 
not to suppose it vile for me to write. And though to 
have written it in another tongue had been both more 
profitable for my study, and also more honest for my 
name, yet I can think my labor well bestowed, if with 



Debasement of Anglo-Norman French. 59 

a little hinderance of my profit and my name, may 
come any furtherance to the pleasure or commodity 
of the gentlemen and yeomen of England, for whose 
sake I took this matter in hand." And again, in his 
dedication to the king, Henry VIII., he says that it 
would have been easier, and fitter for his profession, 
to have written the book in Latin or in Greek. This 
is by no means an extreme case. In 1623, seven 
years after the death of Shakspeare, Bacon spent no 
small part of his time in turning his books, originally 
written in English, into Latin, with the avowed object 
of saving them for posterity ; and in the dedication of 
the third edition of his Essays to the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, written in 1625, he says, " I do conceive that 
the Latin volume of them (being in the universal 
language) may last as long as books last." The im- 
mense incapacity of an author of the seventeenth 
century, and that author Bacon, to comprehend the 
future of his native tongue, is, perhaps, the highest 
tribute that can be paid to that great author of the 
fourteenth century who deliberately trusted his reputa- 
tion entirely to it. 

Debasement of Anglo-Norman French. — 
The second cause for the preference of English to 
French, which showed itself more and more during 
the fourteenth century, was a direct result of the loss 
of Normandy. At the time of the conquest, and for 
a long period following, there was no one tongue in 
Northern France recognized by all as the classic 
French language \ but there were four great dialects 



60 English Language. 

of it, corresponding to four great political divisions, 
each with a literature of its own. One of these was 
the speech of Normandy, and this it was that in the 
eleventh century was carried over into England. But, 
during the centuries following, the power of the French 
royal house was steadily rising, and that of its great 
feudal dependents was as steadily falling. The dialect 
it employed was the dialect of its ancestral dominions, 
the Isle of France, in which Paris is situated ; and, 
as its lowly extended its authority over the neighboring 
districts, it extended along with it the use of its own 
form of speech. As the French of Paris spread over 
the country, the tongues of the provinces, which had 
once been used in literature, sank gradually from the 
condition of dialects to that of patois. This was what 
took place in Normandy after its loss by the English 
crown. But, bad as the speech of Normandy might 
come to appear as compared with that of Paris, it 
would naturally seem far worse with that dialect after 
it had been transported to England, and cut off from 
direct communication with the same dialect on the 
Continent. Diverging more and more, as time went 
on, not merely from the speech of Paris, but even from 
the provincial speech of Normandy itself, it was, in 
consequence, subjected to a double degradation as the 
patois of a patois. This process of debasement began 
to show itself early, though doubtless at first only 
here and there. Walter Map, a writer of the twelfth 
century, tells us that at Marlborough there was reported 
to be a spring, of which he who tasted was sure to 



Debasement of Anglo-Norman French. 61 

speak French afterward in a barbarous manner; so 
that from that time he who spoke that language incor- 
rectly and inelegantly was said to speak French of 
Marlborough. Divergences naturally went on increas- 
ing during the two centuries following ; and, while the 
French taught everywhere in the English schools 
would be certain to have a pretty uniform character, 
it was equally certain to deviate further and further 
from the French which had come to the front as the 
classic form of the language. Langlande refers con- 
temptuously to the " French of Norfolk ; " and Chau- 
cer, in the Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," 
introduces the prioress, who, as a fashionable woman, 
felt it incumbent to speak French, but was unable to 
speak what had then come to be regarded as pure 
French. He says, — 

And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly, 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe. 

In the Prologue to " The Testament of Love," written 
by a contemporary of Chaucer, and long imputed to 
him, there occurs a sentence which marks plainly the 
contemptuous opinion entertained by the French 
themselves of the debased Anglo-Norman dialect 
found in England. " In Latin and French," said the 
author, "hath many sovereign wits had great delight 
to endite, and have many noble things fulfilled ; but 
certes there be some that speak their poesy matter in 
French, of which speech the Frenchmen have as 
good a fantasy as we have in hearing of Frenchmen's 
English." 



62 English Lajignage. 

General Adoption of English by all Classes. 

— All these agencies co-operated in bringing about the 
adoption of the native speech by all classes \ yet at 
the end of the fourteenth century, while the success 
of English was well assured, its victory was even then 
far from complete. As was not unnatural, French, 
after it ceased to be necessary, came to be fashionable ; 
and its use long survived its usefulness. It continued 
to be also, to a great extent, the language of official 
documents. Nearly all the letters of Henry IV., who 
reigned from 1399 to 14 13, are written in it or in 
Latin ; and indeed, in the early part of his reign, it 
almost seems as if it were not considered respectful to 
address him in English. A letter of the Scottish Earl 
of March, dated Feb. 18, 1400, offering his services 
to the English monarch, and entreating his support, 
contains an apology at the close for being written in 
the English language. "And, noble prince," says the 
earl, "mervaile yhe nocht that I write my lettres in 
Englishe, fore that ys mare clere to myne understand- 
yng than Latyne or Fraunche." 

But, during the whole reign of Henry IV. and his 
successor Henry V. (141 3- 1422), the marks of grow- 
ing unfamiliarity with French rapidly accumulate. One 
of the most striking instances of this is to be found, 
indeed, in the very earliest part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, in the case of the negotiations that took place in 
1404, between France and England, in regard to the 
outrages committed by each nation at sea. Three of. 
the ambassadors on the part of the latter power were 



Disuse of French in England. 65 

Thomas Swynborn and John Crofft, knights, and 
Nicholas de Rysshetoun, a professor of both the civil 
and the canon law. In a letter of Swynford and De 
Rysshetoun to the French Council, dated Sept. 1, 
1404, they beg that the answer may be returned to 
them in Latin, and not in French, for the reason, as 
appears subsequently, that with the latter they were 
unacquainted. Again : in a letter of the 3d of Octo- 
ber to the Duchess of Burgundy, Swynborn, Crofft, 
and De Rysshetoun state, that although the treaties 
between England and France had been wont to be 
drawn up in French by the consent of the temporal 
princes concerned in them, who did not understand 
Latin as well as French, yet all the letters missive that 
had passed between the contracting parties had been 
written in the former tongue, as being the common 
and vulgar idiom ; and this custom they desire to have 
continued, for reasons that further on are distinctly 
given. For on the 21st of October, in acknowledg- 
ing the reception of a communication from the French 
ambassadors, they complain of its being written in 
French, and state, that, for men unlearned as they 
were, it might as well have been put into Hebrew. ' It 
is a most striking proof of the general ignorance of 
French that had come to prevail in England, that 
ambassadors selected to carry on delicate and difficult 
negotiations, one of .whom was a scholar by profession, 
should have been utterly unacquainted with the lan- 
guage of the people with which terms of settlement 
were to be made, — a language, moreover, which was 



6\ English Language. 

still largely used in official documents in their own 
country. This ignorance kept on steadily increasing 
among all classes ; and a necessary result was to sub- 
stitute the native for the foreign speech in all the trans- 
actions of life, including, what is always the last to be 
changed, prescribed forms. It was sometimes the 
case that the higher orders changed their methods far 
sooner than those inferior to theni in position. It was 
in the first half of the fifteenth century that many of 
the London guilds began to have their regulations 
translated from French into English, and to use the 
latter tongue in keeping their books. A curious entry 
in the records of the Company of Brewers, not only 
asserts directly that the greater part of the Lords and 
Commons were in the habit of having the proceedings 
in which they were concerned written down in the 
native language, but it moreover seems to say that 
direct influence was exercised by King Henry V. to 
substitute the use of English for French. Of the 
entry, which is in Latin, the following is a translation : 
" Whereas, Our mother-tongue, to wit, the English 
tongue, hath in modern days begun to be honorably 
enlarged and adorned : for that our most excellent 
lord, King Henry the Fifth, hath, in his letters missive, 
and divers affairs touching his own person, more will- 
ingly chosen to declare the secrets of his will ; and, 
for the better understanding of his people, hath, with 
a diligent mind, procured the common idiom (setting 
aside others) to be commended by the exercise of 
writing ; and there are many of our craft of brewers 



Disuse of French in England. 65 

who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the 
said English idiom ; but in others, to wit, the Latin 
and French, before these times used, they do not in 
any wise understand ; for which causes, with many 
others, it being considered how that the greater part 
of the Lords and trusty Commons have begun to make 
their matters to be noted down in our mother-tongue, 
we also in our craft, following in some manner their 
steps, have decreed in future so to commit to memory 
the needful things which concern us." 

At last, towards the close of the fifteenth century, 
the laws enacted by Parliament were for the first time 
expressed in English. They had, after the conquest, 
usually been published in the Latin ; but in the reign 
of the first Edward (1272-1307), at the very time the 
French was beginning to lose its hold upon the na- 
tion, it was introduced into the statutes. In these it 
gradually supplanted the Latin, and by the end of the 
fourteenth century that tongue was no longer used in 
legislative enactments. At the end of the fifteenth 
century, French, in turn, had given way to the English, 
and the triumph of the popular speech was complete. 



CHAPTER V. 

PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE, AND THE CHANGES WROUGHT 
IN IT BY THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 

What was this popular speech, which, at the end of 
the fourteenth century, was for the first time manifest- 
ing its capability of becoming the vehicle of a great 
literature? It was certainly not the Anglo-Saxon. 
Between that and it had taken place a divergence 
even more profound and wide-reaching than that which 
marks the separation of French from its parent Latin. 
The tongue spoken or written by an Englishman of 
the tenth century would have been as unintelligible 
to an Englishman of the fourteenth as it is to an 
Englishman of the nineteenth. In the course of 
those four hundred years the language had not simply 
suffered modification, or undergone development, it 
had experienced revolution. Nor was this popular 
tongue precisely that which is found in the literature 
of to-day ; though the differences between it and our 
present speech are differences of degree, and not of 

66 



England before the Conquest. 67 

kind ; or, to make use of the same form of statement 
already employed, they are differences that have arisen 
from modification and development, and not at all 
from revolution. To bring out the general nature of 
the divergence in grammar and vocabulary that came 
into being between the English of the tenth and 
eleventh centuries and that of the fourteenth will be 
the aim of the present chapter. 

The Language before the Conquest. — Up to 
the Norman conquest the linguistic situation may be 
thus described : A Low-Germanic tongue, usually called 
by those who spoke it E?tglisc, or English, but which 
by us is usually styled Anglo-Saxon, was the speech 
of all the Teutonic inhabitants of Great Britain from 
the Channel to the Frith of Forth. In it there existed 
several dialects ; but one of these, the West-Saxon, 
had become the language of law and of literature, — 
the language in which the educated classes tallfed and 
wrote. Into this language there had been introduced 
in the course of centuries a slight number of Celtic 
and of Norse words, a rmxCn larger number of Latin 
ones. But, notwithstanding these additions, it con- 
tinued to be — what it had been, not merely as regards 
grammar, but also as regards vocabulary — essentially 
a Teutonic tongue. 

The Language after the Conquest. — With 
the introduction of Norman-French, this state of 
affairs underwent a change. It was not that the 
Anglo-Saxon ceased to be a spoken tongue, or even a 
written one ; but it did cease to be a cultivated one. 



68 English Language. 

One result of this was, that the West- Saxon dialect 
sank speedily from its position of supremacy, and in 
process of time fell to the level of the other dialects 
which it had itself supplanted. The inevitable effect 
was, that the popular speech was left to run its own 
course, without any restraining influence whatever. 
Each district had words and forms, and syntactical 
constructions, and methods of pronunciation, of its 
own, which were little known or used outside of its 
borders. All was in confusion ; and changes neces- 
sarily took place rapidly. This was something that is 
always sure to occur when a cultivated tongue comes 
to be used exclusively by the uneducated or the par- 
tially educated • for it is a speedy result that no 
standard of authority exists anywhere in it, which is 
felt to be binding upon all. The influence of the old 
literature is gone \ and as yet no great authors have 
risen to establish methods of expression to which the 
speech of the better class will be made to conform. 
There are in it but few books written, and there are 
but few persons to read those that are written. 
Learned almost wholly by the ear, and scarcely at all 
by the eye, the language is specially subject to the 
phonetic and linguistic changes of all kinds that rude 
and ignorant men may bring about by modifying pro- 
nunciation, by confounding declensions and conjuga- 
tions, by disregarding syntactical laws, in short, by all 
the numerous processes of decay and regeneration to 
which a living tongue is subject by the very fact of its 
being a living tongue. To all these influences the 



English after the Conquest. 69 

native speech was exposed, with little check, after the 
conquest; and it at once entered, in consequence, 
upon a series of rapid and violent changes. 

These changes were of several kinds ; but there 
were two principal ones. One of them was the loss 
of inflections in the native speech; the other, the 
introduction into it of French words. The latter is a 
direct result of the conquest; the former, only an 
indirect one. For, even in the Anglo-Saxon period, 
the process of stripping the speech of its inflection 
had already begun to show itself to a slight extent ; 
and it has taken place on a large scale in the case of 
other Teutonic peoples, whose languages have been 
subject to none of the influences that follow subju- 
gation by a foreign race speaking a foreign tongue. 
What the introduction of the Norman-French into 
England, and its use there by the higher classes, 
did, was to abolish any standard of authority for the 
native speech. It was thereby speedily thrown into a 
chaotic condition ; all orderly development was pre- 
vented ; the abandonment of inflection, which to some 
extent was certain to come some time, was rapidly 
hastened. Moreover, there can be little doubt that 
an additional result was the giving up of inflections 
on a scale that would never have taken place had the 
language been left subject only to the influences that 
could have affected it in a country largely cut off by 
its position from contact with foreign nations. These 
are indirect consequences only; but they were the 



70 English Language. 

first to exhibit themselves, and are therefore the first 
to demand our attention. 

The changes, indeed, that took place, as a result of 
the conquest, directly in the inflectional system, and 
indirectly in the vocabulary, of the English tongue, 
were so numerous and great that it has been customary 
to give the language during several centuries different 
names. It is of itself a convincing proof of the con- 
fused and varying character of our early speech, that 
scarcely any two scholars have agreed upon the titles 
or dates of the periods which they have adopted. 
This is not at all to be wondered at. Scientific pre- 
cision in such respects is not attainable in even the 
most cultivated and stable tongues. Dates in the his- 
tory of a language are convenient for reference : they 
are worth nothing for accuracy of statement. Men 
do not use one form of speech one year, and a differ- 
ent form the following year. This, which is true of any 
tongue, no matter how marked the changes, is espe- 
cially true of the earlier stages of our own, in which the 
changes were not merely rapid, but in which they were 
unequal in different parts of the country. The lan- 
guage of the north of England advanced much more 
quickly toward Modern English than the language of 
the south ; and a statement, in consequence, which 
would be true of the one, might be grossly false of the 
other. 

Periods of the English Language. — It is, 
accordingly, to be borne in mind that the titles and 
dates about to be given are in themselves of no au- 



Periods of English. Ji 

thority, and are used mainly as a matter of conven- 
ience \ that the same terms, when employed by others, 
may not and often do not mean the same things ; that 
other divisions, and an entirely different nomenclature, 
will be found in other works treating upon this same 
subject. With this understanding it is only necessary 
to add that the following will be the names and limits 
of the periods into w r hich, in this volume, English is 
divided. 

I. The Anglo-Saxon period will embrace that form 
of the language spoken from the first coming of the 
Saxons and Angles — that is, from the middle of the 
fifth century — to the middle of the century following 
the Norman conquest, — that is, to the year 1150. 

II. The Early English period will embrace the form 
of the language spoken between 1150 and 1350. 
When a further subdivision of this is rendered desirable, 
the first half of it, the century from 1150 to 1250, 
will be spoken of as the Semi-Saxon, or Late Anglo- 
Saxon : the second half of it, the century from 1250 
to 1350, will be called the Old English. 

III. Middle English will include the form of the 
language used between 1350 and 1550. 

IV. Modern English will be the name given to the 
language as spoken from the middle of the sixteenth 
century to the present time. 

The following schedule represents, accordingly, the 
nomenclature of the periods, with their limits, as em- 
ployed in this volume : — 



J2 English Language. 

I. Anglo-Saxon 450-1150 

Semi-Saxon, or ) 



II. 



Late Anglo-Saxon ) 
Old English 



. 1 1 50-1250 

' Early English . . 1 150-1350 

. 1250-1350 

III. Middle English I 35°~ I 55° 

IV. Modern English 1550- 



Literature of the Early English Period. — 

Of the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, a slight 
account has already been given. In the Early English 
period there were composed a large number of works, 
many of which still exist only in manuscript. To a 
great extent they are translations from the French, or 
a working-over of French productions. As regards 
their subject-matter, they may be divided into the fol- 
lowing classes : 1 . Religious works, including legends 
of saints and martyrs. These may be said to begin 
with the Ormulum (life of Christ, made up from the 
Gospels, by an Augustinian monk named Ormin or 
Orm), Hali Meidenhad (Holy Maidenhood), and the 
Ancren Riwle (Rule of Anchorites) . Ail of these be- 
long to the Semi-Saxon period. Later there are series 
of homilies and homiletic treatises, both in prose and 
verse. In the Old English period may be mentioned, 
as among the most important works, Dan Michel's 
" Ayenbite of Inwit " (Remorse of Conscience), in the 
Kentish dialect, the " Handlyng Synne " by Robert 
of Brunne, " The Pricke of Conscience " by Richard 
Rolle de Hampole, and versions of the histories, or 
parts of histories, contained in the Bible, such as 






Early English Literature. 73 

"Genesis and Exodus," and the " Cursor Mundi," an 
account of the world founded upon the Old and New 
Testaments, with legends interspersed drawn from every 
quarter. To this list, imperfect as it is, may be added 
a large number of lives of saints and martyrs, both in 
the Semi-Saxon and Old English periods. 2. Romances 
and legendary history. These may be said to begin 
with the "Brut," a poem composed by Layamon, a 
Worcestershire priest, which gives an account of the 
legendary history of Britain from its occupation by a 
mythical Brutus (a great-grandson of ^Eneas) and his 
Trojan followers, down to its partial conquest by the 
Saxons. Among the metrical romances of the Early 
English period, "King Horn," " Havelok the Dane," 
several legendary poems founded upon the life of 
Alexander the Great, and varying widely from real his- 
tory, may be regarded as representative specimens. 
3. Histories, partly fabulous, it is true, but not so 
deemed by their authors. These belong to the Old 
English period exclusively, and consist of works in 
verse by Robert of Gloucester and by Robert Man- 
ning of Brunne. The latter is a translation from the 
French of Pierre de Langtoft. Both of these treat of 
the history of Britain from the legendary coming of 
Brutus to a period near their own time ; the former 
ending with the accession of Edward I. in 1272 ; the 
latter, with his death in 1307. 4. Shorter poems, 
some of which are of a satirical nature, but most of 
them purely lyrical. The most conspicuous among 
these are "The Land of Cokaygne," the "Ule and 



74 English Language. 

Nihtegale " (the Owl and Nightingale) , and a series of 
lyric poems of a political, devotional, or social nature. 
The works in all these classes are of the highest value 
to the student of the language ; but it is only those 
of the last class that have any claim whatever to literary 
excellence, and these are comparatively few in number. 

One feature worthy of mention, that characterizes 
the Early English period, is the tendency to abandon 
alliteration, and substitute for it final rhyme. In 
Anglo-Saxon verse instances of rhyme are only occa- 
sional, and probably often purely accidental : at any 
rate, it is only in a piece of eighty lines that it is 
deliberately employed throughout, and in that it is 
mixed with alliteration, with the result that no modern 
scholar has been successful in getting any coherent 
meaning out of the poem, or rather of putting any into 
it. Alliterative verse did not die out till the sixteenth 
century ; but the only conspicuous work composed in 
it, "The Vision of Piers Plowman,' 7 belongs to the 
fourteenth. Its inferiority, indeed, to rhyme as an 
instrument of expression, led to its abandonment by 
all the Teutonic nations at comparatively early periods 
in their literary history. 

Changes in Grammar between Anglo-Saxon 
and Middle English. — A more detailed account 
of the changes that took place in the grammatical 
structure after the conquest will be found in another 
place : here only a slight summary can be given. 
Comparisons can necessarily be made only between 
periods which have a standard literature of their own, 



Grammatical Changes in Early English, 75 

not exhibiting the peculiarities of individual writers, 
but the universal characteristics of the cultivated 
speech. In this particular case the comparison must 
be made, accordingly, between the literary West-Saxon 
and that dialect of English which was employed by 
the great writers of the fourteenth century, and by 
them made the language of all our literature. Of 
these, Chaucer, as the greatest of all, may be taken 
as the representative of the rest. It is, however, to be 
borne in mind that whatever may be the limits fixed 
upon for the periods in the history of any tongue, 
assertions made in regard to them can only be true 
generally : they are always subject to specific excep- 
tions. For illustration, its, as the genitive of the 
neuter pronoun of the third person, is a characteristic 
of Modern English as contrasted with the earlier 
speech in which his was the form employed. Yet, 
while this is true generally, it is so far from being true 
specifically, that his can be found where we should 
now use its, for a hundred years after the Modern 
English period begins. 

Let us begin, then, with the modifications which the 
inflectional system underwent. These are first brought 
to our knowledge by certain orthographical changes 
which took place in consequence of a change in pro- 
nunciation. Two of them are of special importance. 
One is of the weakening into e of the vowels a, o, and 
u of the terminations. Thus, in Anglo-Saxon, -an is 
the regular ending of the infinitive : it was soon 
after the conquest weakened into -en. 'To tell/ in 



j6 English Language, 

the eleventh century was tellan : in the twelfth cen- 
tury it became tellen. So, in like manner, oxa, ' ox/ 
became oxe ; oxan, 'oxen/ became oxen; stdnas, 
6 stones,' and stolas, 'stools/ became stanes and stoles ; 
denu, 'den/ became dene. This was a change that 
was certain to happen in English, as in the other Teu- 
tonic languages, had the Norman-French never set 
foot in Britain. All the effect produced by their 
coming was to hasten its general adoption; and 
during the twelfth century it did become generally 
established. The second change was the dropping 
of the final n, — a peculiarity which the Northum- 
brian dialect, as has been seen (p. 37), exhibited at 
an early day. This, however, was much slower of 
general adoption than the weakening of the vowels a> 
o, and u; but, as it continued to extend itself more 
and more, the result of the two changes working 
together was to make the final e the one termination 
of the Middle English which represented nearly all 
the terminations of the Anglo-Saxon that had been 
preserved at all ; so that in the study of this one end- 
ing is involved the study of nearly the whole gram- 
matical inflection of that period. It was, moreover, 
largely due to the steady reduction of all terminations 
to this single one, that the confusion sprang up in 
usage, which, in turn, led, to a great extent, to the 
rejection of inflection altogether. What there was left 
of it in the fourteenth century, compared with Anglo- 
Saxon, can be stated very briefly. 

In the noun, the two leading declensions of the An- 



Grammatical Changes in Early English. 77 

glo-Saxon (the vowel and the consonant, or the strong 
and the weak), with their several subordinate declen- 
sions, had been reduced to the one inflection seen in 
the masculine noun of the vowel declension. The 
singular, as in Modern English, had a distinct form 
only for the genitive case ; the ending being -es. All 
the cases of the plural were alike \ the termination 
being, as now, the same as that of the genitive singu- 
lar. This -es of the genitive singular and of the plural 
usually formed a distinct syllable in pronunciation, at 
least in monosyllabic nouns. 

The adjective, which in Anglo-Saxon was very 
rich in inflections, had been nearly stripped of them 
altogether. The plural was generally distinguished 
from the singular by the addition of e, — a distinction 
which necessarily could not be made when the singu- 
lar itself ended in that letter. With the disappearance 
of the terminations had nearly disappeared, also, the 
difference between the two original declensions of the 
adjective, — the definite and the indefinite; though a 
trace of the former continued to manifest itself in the 
addition of e in certain cases to the singular. 

The personal pronouns and the interrogative who 
(A. S. hwa) were somewhat more fortunate in pre- 
serving their inflection. They retained a distinct 
form for the case which we now call the objective ; 
and this was founded upon the original dative, the 
original accusative having been given up. The dual 
number of the pronouns of the first and second per- 
sons was entirely lost. In the case of the pronouns of 



78 English Language, 

the third person, some of its forms had been aban- 
doned, and their places were supplied from the origi- 
nal demonstrative pronoun now represented by that 
Pronouns which had inflections resembling those of 
the adjective were stripped of them in the same 
manner as they. 

In the case of the verb, while the distinction 
between the two leading conjugations still continued 
to exist as now, the barriers between the subordinate 
conjugations under each had been generally broken 
down. Again : the verbs of the strong or old con- 
jugation — that is, verbs like drive, drove, which 
add nothing to form the preterite, and suffer vowel 
change — had in vast numbers passed over to the 
weak conjugation, that is, to verbs like light, lighted, 
which take an additional syllable (or letter) to 
form the preterite. The inflections, to some extent, 
were still retained ; thus, for illustration, they tell 
was they tellen or they telle. The use of compound 
verb phrases, such as / have told, I shall tell, had 
been vastly extended ; and in particular, at this very 
time, the employment of do and did with the infini- 
tive — as in / do give, I did give — was just beginning 
to be adopted generally. 

A consideration of these statements shows that 
Middle English differs but slightly in its grammatical 
structure from the English of to-day. In fact, no 
small proportion of the difficulty that the modern 
reader at first encounters in examining the literature of 
this period is due merely to difference of orthography. 






Grammatical Changes in Early English. 79 

A passage from Chaucer in the original spelling, and 
in modern spelling so far as it can be employed, will 
illustrate better than pages of description the essential 
likeness, and the extent of the unlikeness, that prevail 
between the language of the fourteenth century and 
that of the nineteenth ; and when compared with the 
specimens of the English of the Anglo-Saxon period, 
found on pp. 25, 27, 28, will show clearly how wide 
was the chasm that separated the language of the 
fourteenth century from that of the eleventh. 

In the modernized version of the following passage 
from " The Canterbury Tales " the pronunciation of syl- 
lables no longer sounded is marked by the sign v ; the 
accentuation of syllables not now accented is marked 
by the sign f ; while the insertion of a hyphen between 
syllables shows that they are all to be pronounced. 

" In tholde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, 
Of which that Britons speken greet honour, 
All was this land fulfild of fayerie ; 
The elf queene with hir joly compaignye, 
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede ; 
This was the olde opinion, as I rede. 
I speke of manye hundred yeres ago ; 
But now kan no man se none elves mo. 
For now the grete charitee and prayeres 
Of lymytours and othere hooly freres, 
That serchen every lond and every streem, 
As thikke as motes in the sonne beem, 
Blessynge halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures 
Citees and burghes, castels hye and toures 
Thropes and bernes, shipnes and dayeryes, 
This maketh that ther been no fairyes. 



80 English Language. 

For ther as wont to walken was an elf, 
Ther walketh now the lymytour hym self, 
In undermeles and in morwenynges, 
And seyth his matyns and his hooly thynges 
As he gooth in his lymytacioun. 
Wommen may go now saufly up and doun, 
In every bussh or under every tree ; 
There is noon other incubus but he." 

" In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, 
Of which that Britons speaken great honour, 
All was this land fulfilled of fa-e-r^ ; 
The elf queen, with her jolly company, 
Danced full oft on many a greene mead; 
This was the old opinion, as I read. 
I speak of many hundred years ago ; 
But now can no man see none elves mo. 
For now the greate charity and prayeres 
Of limiters 1 and other holy freres, 
That searchen every land and every stream, 
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam, 
Blessing halles, chambers, kitchenes, and bowers, 
Cities and boroughs, castles high and towers, 
Thorpes 2 and barnes, shipnes 3 and da-i-ries, 
This maketh that there ben no fa-i-ries. 
For there as wont to walken was an elf, 
There walketh now the limiter himself, 
In undermeles 4 and in morwenynges, 6 
And saith his matins and his holy thinges 
As he goth in his lim-i-ta-ti-6n. 
Women may now go safely up and down, 
In every bush or under every tree ; 
There is none other incubus but he." 



1 A begging friar, assigned a certain limit for begging. 2 Villages. 
3 Stables. * Afternoons. 6 Mornings. 



i 



Lexical Changes in Early English. 81 

Change in the Vocabulary. — Such is a brief 
outline of the changes that took place in the inflec- 
tional system of the English tongue. Many of them 
would doubtless have happened had there been no 
Norman conquest ; but to that event were certainly 
due both the rapidity with which, and the extent to 
which, they were carried out. But the second great 
change we have to consider was no indirect result : 
this was the introduction of foreign words into the 
vocabulary, a process which, in certain respects, has 
transformed the character of our speech. 

The coming of the Normans into England brought 
two languages into close geographical connection. 
French was the speech of the higher classes ; English, 
that of the great body of the people : yet for two cen- 
turies these tongues existed side by side, without the 
latter borrowing words, to any extent, from the former. 
It is not necessary to assume that this state of things 
was due to any hostility between the races, or to the 
disinclination on the part of the conquered people to 
use the language of their conquerors. They did not 
employ any new words because they did not need 
them : the existing stock of terms was amply sufficient 
to convey all the knowledge they sought to impart, or 
to express the few new ideas to which they gave birth. 
Certainly the fact of little borrowing cannot be dis- 
puted. The "Brut" of Layamon was composed nearly 
a hundred and fifty years after the conquest : it is a 
poem containing thirty-two thousand short lines, and 
yet there are in it hardly a hundred words of Norman- 



82 English Language. 

French origin. The proportion is even less in the 
"Ormulum," — a composition of about the same date, 
and containing nearly twenty thousand short lines. The 
number of French words adopted into English speech 
naturally became more and more as time went on ; 
and at every period since its introduction it has always 
varied with the nature of the subject-matter ; but, down 
to the end of the thirteenth century, the additions that 
had come from this source to the native speech formed 
only a small percentage of the whole. 

It was in the latter half of the Old English period 
— that is, from 1300 to 1350 — that a great change 
took place in this respect. It was during those years 
that the French-speaking population of the island may 
be said to have generally abandoned their original 
tongue, and to have adopted that of the mass of the 
people. It was natural that they should bring into the 
speech they had made their own many of the words 
most familiar to them, especially those descriptive of 
their ways of life, and expressive of thoughts and 
feelings peculiar to themselves. This was, indeed, the 
case to a remarkable extent. During the half- century 
referred to, a vast multitude of words came from the 
French into the English : what had been left of the 
grammatical inflection was Teutonic ; but the vocabu- 
lary from this time assumed that mixed character which 
has ever since been one of its marked peculiarities. 
Even in the earliest writers of the Middle English 
period, the foreign words constitute one-half of the 
whole number they employ ; and the proportion lias 



Lexical Changes in Early English. 83 

remained essentially unchanged from that time to the 
present. Such a statement is, of course, based upon 
the special glossary of an author in which a word that 
occurs but once in his writings counts for as much as 
one that is used by him a thousand times ; not upon 
the frequency of the occurrence of Teutonic or of 
Romance words in particular pages. 

This vast accession of French words is technically 
called the " Latin of the Third Period ; " but it is widely 
different in character from any accession the language 
had previously received ; for it entered into and modi- 
fied the whole frame-work of expression, and pro- 
foundly influenced the course which the language 
was to take in reference to future additions to its 
vocabulary. Other Teutonic tongues may make use 
of Romance words : the English must make use of 
them, even in denouncing them. This is an essential 
distinction, which may be disregarded, but cannot be 
denied; and it had its origin in that change in the 
nature of the language which was a direct result of 
the vast irruption of French terms in the fourteenth 
century. Has this change been a benefit, or an injury? 
This question has given rise to much controversy, and 
is, from its nature, one that can never be settled to the 
satisfaction of all. In this place it is only important 
to point out the principal losses which the speech 
suffered as a consequence of the alteration in its 
character. 

Losses of Middle English as compared 
with Anglo-Saxon. — Let us first consider the loss 



84 English Language. 

of native words. Language is always economical, and 
is not long disposed to retain terms and expressions 
of which it has no real need. When, therefore, two 
different words — the one of Anglo-Saxon, the other of 
French origin, but both meaning precisely the same 
thing — came to exist side by side, one of two results 
was almost certain to happen : either both were re- 
tained, and a distinction was made in their signification, 
or if no such use could be made of both, or, as a matter 
of fact, was not made, one of them was almost certain 
to be dropped. In a large number of cases in the 
speech of the fourteenth century, it was the native 
word that was rejected, and the foreign one that was 
retained. It is probably an under rather than an over 
estimate to assert that more than one-half of the 
Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been lost to Modern Eng- 
lish ; and the place of it has necessarily been sup- 
plied, whether for good or ill, by importations from 
alien sources. 

A second and more serious blow to the resources of 
the language was the loss of a large number of forma- 
tive prefixes and suffixes, by the addition of the former 
of which the meaning of the word was modified, and 
by that of the latter the word itself was changed from 
one part of speech into another. In these elements 
the original speech abounded, and possessed, in conse- 
quence, almost unlimited power in the creation of new 
terms from native roots. Thus from the Anglo-Saxon 
flow an, l to flow/ seven new compounds were formed 
by the addition of various prefixes, of which seven, 






Loss of Formative Affixes. 85 

only one, oferflowan, f to overflow,' survives with us. 
In a similar manner, from the verb sittan, 'to sit,' fifteen 
new verbs were formed, of which not a single one is 
to be found to-day, though their places are in part 
supplied in this case, as in others, by joining separate 
particles to the verb, forming such expressions as, sit 
by, sit 07i. And, even in some instances where a prefix 
has been retained in certain words, the power of em- 
ploying it to form new ones has been given up. Thus 
with is still found in withdraw, withhold, with- 
stand, but we no longer think of prefixing it to other 
verbs ; whereas, originally, it could have been com- 
pounded with almost any verb, and was actually com- 
pounded with about thirty. Again: the Anglo-Saxo • 
was comparatively rich in formative suffixes, b 
appending of which one part of speech wa cill P ai ^ e A 
into another. For illustration : In Modern En£ l m the 
adding of the suffix -er to the verb do changes it mto 
the noun doer ; the adding of -ness to the adjectite 
black, changes it into the noun blackness ; the add- 
ing of -y to the noun snow changes it into the 
adjective snowy. Many of these formative suffixes 
belonging to the ancient tongue the modern tongue 
has lost; though here, to some extent, nhas supplied 
their places by borrowing from the xi'i> _-i, the Latin, 
and the Greek. 

The third loss was in the power of forming self- 
explaining compounds. In this reject the Anglo- 
Saxon rivalled the modern German, l^ius carpenter 
could with them be expressed by treow-wyrhta, ' tree- 



86 English Language. 

wright/ or ' worker in wood ; ' butcher, by fl<%sc- 
mangere, e flesh-monger/ or c dealer in flesh;* library 
by bochus, ' book-house ; p and hundreds of illustrations 
could easily be given of the facility and freedom with 
which men then employed the power of combining 
familiar words to form new ones. Many of these 
compounds went out of use in the fourteenth century 
in consequence of words with an equivalent meaning 
having been taken from the French. The mere loss 
of these was not in itself so serious a detriment, how- 
ever, as the indisposition, which sprang up in conse- 
quence, to form or to employ self-explaining com- 
pounds whose places could be readily supplied by 
borrowing. This indisposition, not to say aversion, 
estim^ e p] am ]y traced in the history of the language 
Anglo-ba. beginning f the Middle English period to 
the pF^fent time. Thus, for illustration, the Anglo- 
Saxon sunnen-stede appears in Early English, and 
later as sun-stead, that is, the sun's stopping-place ; 
and was used to denote that part of the ecliptic in 
which the sun is farthest from the equator. In lieu of 
this, we now go to the Latin solstitium, formed of two 
words similar in meaning to the corresponding English 
ones, and frc n it derive the term solstice. By this 
we certainly lose something in picturesqueness and 
force of expression, though we may possibly gain in 
precision. Or an illustration of a later period can 
be employed. A certain liquid substance exuding in 
various ways from the earth needs a name. Seen 
oozing from the crevices of a rock, it is naturally 



Gams made by English, 87 

called rock-oil, a term, to all appearances, sufficient- 
ly definite to distinguish it from all other kinds of oil. 
Yet, instead of using this, we go to the Latin petra, 
'rock/ and oleum, 'oil/ and rock-oil appears as 
petroleum, — a word, the meaning of which must be 
learned before it is understood. Processes like these 
are constantly going on, and in the case of scientific 
words they may be considered necessary ; for it is of the 
utmost importance that a technical term should convey 
to the minds of all one idea, and but one idea, — that 
its signification should be imposed upon it, and not be 
suggested by it. This power of forming self-explain- 
ing compounds can, however, hardly be said to be 
lost : it is rather a power held in abeyance, dwarfed 
by disuse, but by no means destroyed. 

These changes may seem to have seriously impaired 
the value of the language. To a certain extent it may 
be admitted that they have been detrimental; but 
they have been far less so than they appear. It would, 
indeed, be a mistake to suppose that there have not 
been great gains made, as well as great losses suffered. 
If one method of expression is denied language, 
another is speedily found to take its place. The giving 
up of numerous Anglo-Saxon formative endings, by 
which words were changed from one part of speech 
into another, has been largely and perhaps wholly 
counterbalanced in Modern English by the facility 
with which the simple words themselves now pass 
from one part of speech to another. Thus black is an 
adjective; but it is used likewise as a noun and a 



88 English Language. 

verb. Again : stone is a noun ; but it is also a verb, 
and may be used with the attributive sense of an 
adjective, as, for instance, in stone house and stone 
jar. The wide employment of the substantive in the 
manner last designated, which forms one of the most 
striking peculiarities of Modern English, far more than 
offsets any loss due to the lack of facility in forming 
self-explaining compounds. Moreover, if many words 
belonging to the Anglo-Saxon have disappeared from the 
tongue now spoken, their places have been more than 
supplied by importations from foreign sources ; and 
these have now become so thoroughly identified with 
the words that have come from the original speech, 
that, in a large number of cases, no one but the special 
student is conscious of any difference in their origin. 
It is only prejudice or ignorance that will deny that 
these importations have added immensely to the re- 
sources of the language, especially in its power of rep- 
resenting delicate shades of thought, and the higher 
and more complex relations which exist between the 
conceptions of the mind. In this respect the bor- 
rowed words stand in decided contrast to the native 
ones, to which latter is mainly left the representation 
of all deep feeling. The language of the reasoning 
faculties is, in consequence, largely different with us 
from the languages of the emotional fhculties, with the 
advantage to the former, that it gains by this in precis- 
ion, and to the latter, that it gains in vividness and 
power. There results, indeed, from the union of the 
foreign and native elements, a wealth of phraseology 



Capacity of Expression. 89 

and a many-sideness in the English tongue, which give 
it in these respects a superiority over any other modern 
cultivated speech. German is strictly a pure Teutonic 
speech ; but no native speaker of it claims for it any 
superiority over the English as an instrument of ex- 
pression, while many are -willing to concede its infe- 
riority. At any rate, the character of the language, 
whether for good or ill, was fixed for all succeeding 
time at the beginning of the Middle English period. 
We may grieve over it, or we may rejoice over it \ but 
we cannot change it. What it then became under the 
hand of the great writers who moulded it, that it has 
since continued essentially to be, and that it will be 
certain to remain so long as it lasts, in its present form, 
as a spoken and written speech. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE THREE DIALECTS OF EARLY ENGLISH, 
AND THE RISE OF THE MIDLAND. 

It has already been remarked that the dialect in 
which Chaucer wrote became the language of litera- 
ture, and has remained as such until this day. What 
was this dialect? How came it to be employed by 
him? What was its relation to other dialects, or to 
the ancient tongue from which, in a certain sense, it 
may be said to have descended ? To make the answer 
to these questions clear, it will first be necessary to 
recapitulate at this point, briefly but connectedly, what 
has been said elsewhere, but in scattered passages. 

Of the various dialects existing during the Anglo- 
Saxon period, that is from 450 to 1150, the West- 
Saxon was the one that attained to literary supremacy. 
Enough exists of the form of language spoken in the 
ancient kingdom of North umbria to make it certain 
that the speech of the north of England varied in 
many respects from that of the south. But, as the 
West-Saxon is the only one of the earliest English dia- 



Early English Dialects. 91 

lects that can be said to have both maintained and 
preserved a literature, it is for us the literary Anglo- 
Saxon, the only remaining type of our tongue in its 
original classical form. But from this position of su- 
premacy the Norman conquest had the speedy effect 
of displacing it. Its special forms and inflections, its 
peculiarities of grammatical construction, could not be 
long looked upon as the standard of correct writing 
and speaking. Such a standard could only be main- 
tained by an educated class ; and the attention of the 
educated classes was from this time turned exclusively, 
either to Latin or to French. The West-Saxon, as an 
inevitable consequence, sank to the level of the other 
dialects : it had no longer any special pre-eminence of 
its own. Henceforward he who wrote in the native 
language wrote in that form of it with which he was 
most familiar. He wrote in the dialect of the district 
of country in which he had been brought up, or in 
which he dwelt ; and, with nothing existing anywhere 
that could be regarded as authority, the forces that 
tend to bring about diversity of speech were sure to 
gain strength more rapidly than those which tend to 
bring about uniformity. 

The Three Early English Dialects. — Dur- 
ing these centuries, therefore, — the twelfth, the thir- 
teenth, and the fourteenth, — it is to be borne in mind 
that there was in no sense a national language. There 
existed a number of dialects, each one of which had as 
much right as any of the others to be called the English 
language. The points of similarity were naturally far 



92 English Language. 

greater in number and in importance than the points 
of dissimilarity ; but, for all that, the latter were suffi- 
cient to make the variations observable by all, and 
especially the difference between the speech of the 
north and that of the south of England. This at 
once came to the surface as soon as the pressure was 
withdrawn that had brought all the previously existing 
dialects under the supremacy of the West-Saxon. It 
had existed from the earliest period ; but it only be- 
came prominent when both were brought to a common 
level of comparison by sharing in a common degrada- 
tion. But little more than half a century had passed 
after the conquest, when the chronicler William of 
Malmesbury asserted that the speech of the Northum- 
brians, especially at York, sounded so rude and harsh 
to the men of the South, that the latter were scarcely 
able to understand it. Similar testimony to this diver- 
gence is borne by Giraldus Cambrensis, a scholar who 
flourished not much later. About 1194 he finished 
a work in Latin, giving an account of Wales ; and in 
it he incidentally pointed out that the language of 
Southern England was more ancient in its character 
than that of the northern parts, and much closer to 
the original tongue as preserved in writing. 

Upon this point we have again precise and positive 
testimony from Higden, the writer of the first half of 
the fourteenth century who has already been quoted 
on this question of language. He asserted distinctly 
the existence of three leading dialects in his time. 
These are his statements, as translated by Trevisa : — 



Early English Dialects. 93 

" Also Englysch men, theygh hy hadde fram the bygynnyng 
thre maner speche, Southeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche 
(in the myddel of the lond), as hy come of thre maner people 
of Germania ; notheless, by commyxstion and mellyng, f urst with 
Danes and afterward with Normans, in menye the contray 
longage ys apeyred, and some vseth strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, 
harryng and garryng, grisbittyng. [By these five words Trevisa 
translates the Latin boatus et gorritus] . . . Also, of the for- 
seyde Saxon tonge that ys deled a thre, and ys abyde scars- 
lych with feaw vplondysch men, and ys gret wondur ; for men 
of the est with men of the west, as hit were vndur the same 
party of heuene, acordeth more in sounyng of speche than men 
of the north with men of the south ; therfore hyt ys that 
Mercij, that buth men of Myddel Engelond, as hyt were parte- 
ners of the endes, vndurstondeth betre the syde longages, 
Northeron and Southeron, than Northeron and Southeron vndur- 
stondeth eyther other." x 

The extant writings of these periods bear ample 
witness to the truth of Higden's statement. There 
were, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, and even earlier, three great divisions of 
English speech, with differences so pronounced, that 
the dwelling-place of a man within certain limits could 

1 " Also Englishmen, though they had from the beginning three kinds of 
speech, Southern, Northern, and Midland speech (in the middle of the land), 
as they came from three kinds of people of Germany, nevertheless, by mixing 
and mingling, first with Danes and afterward with Normans, in many the 
native language is corrupted, and some use strange babbling, chattering, growl- 
ing and snarling, teeth-grinding. . . . Also, in regard to the aforesaid Saxon 
tongue, that is divided into three, and has remained [in use] with [a] few 
back-country men, there is great wonder; for men of the East with men 
of the West, as it were under the same portion of heaven, agree more in 
the sound of [their] speech than nien of the North with men of the South: 
therefore it is that the Mercians, that are men of Middle England, as it were 
partners of the ends, understand better the border languages, Northern and 
Southern, than either Northern or Southern understands the other." 



94 English Language. 

be immediately told by his language. The distinction 
is traceable now without difficulty in the works that 
have been handed down ; but it was as fully recognized 
then. Chaucer, for illustration, wrote in the Midland 
dialect of the eastern counties : in so doing he regularly 
forms the third person singular of the present tense of 
the verb in -th, the plural in -en or -e. But in " The 
Reeve's Tale " he introduces two characters who are 
described as coming from a town " far in the north ; " 
and the special peculiarities of that dialect are de- 
signedly represented in the forms they use. In the lan- 
guage put into their mouths the third person singular 
of the present tense ends in -s, as generally in Modern 
English : the plural has likewise the same termination. 
Other characteristics of the speech of the North, or of 
certain varieties of it, occur frequently, such as I is, 
thou is; the use of a for o, as in ga, ham(e) f hald 
nat, sang; of til for to ; of sal for shall; and others 
might be mentioned. These were differences that 
could not be disregarded by a writer of that time. 
The divergence, indeed, was not only generally recog- 
nized, it was also so deeply marked, that works com- 
posed in either of the two extreme dialects required 
to be translated into the other in order to be under- 
stood. A well-known early English poem, the " Cur- 
sor Mundi," already mentioned, was written about the 
end of the thirteenth century in the language of the 
North. One story in it was taken, however, from a 
work composed in the dialect of the South ; and the 
author of the " Cursor Mundi " speaks of the latter in 



Early EnglisJi Dialects. 95 

words which would almost lead one to think that he 
looked upon it as a foreign tongue; for, after men- 
tioning his authority, he goes on to say, — 

" In a writt this ilke I fand, 
Himself it wroght I understand. 
In Suthrin Englijs was it draun, 
And I haue turned it till vr aun 
Langage of the northren lede, 
That can nan other Englis rede." * 

Lines 20059-64. 

Geographical Limits of the Three Dialects. 

— The geographical limits of these divisions of Eng- 
lish speech may be roughly stated as follows : the 
Northern dialect was the lineal descendant of the 
Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon, and it covered 
about the same extent of territory ; that is, the region 
stretching from the Humber on the south to the Frith 
of Forth on the north, and bounded by the Pennine 
Mountains on the west. It was, however, during the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and later, constantly 
making its way still farther to the north, in Scotland. 
The Midland dialect occupied the central counties 
from the Humber to the Thames, and the district west 
of the Pennine chain ; and the Southern stretched from 
the Thames to the English Channel, with a portion of 
the western counties north of the Thames. It is not 

1 "Ina writing this same [thing] I found; 
He himself composed it, I understand. 
In Southern English was it composed, 
And I have turned it to our own 
Language of the northern people, 
Thai can read no other English." 



g6 English Language, 

to be understood that there were not variations, and 
great variations, within these lines : it is only to be said 
that the differences within the great divisions were 
slight compared with the resemblances. The Midland 
dialect, however, as seen in the speech of the eastern 
and the western counties, was in some points so dis- 
similar that it is often divided into the East Midland 
and the West Midland. 

It was the language of the North and that of the 
South, as is stated by Trevisa, that stood the farthest 
apart. Between these two wavered the dialect of the 
Midland counties ; sometimes and in some places in- 
clining to the one, at other times and in other places 
inclining to the other. Each one of the three called 
itself the English speech, but did not deny the title 
to the others. Scotch was then the appellation given 
to the tongue of the Celtic inhabitants of Northern 
Britain. Its modern sense, as applied to one variety 
of our language, was not then known. But one im- 
portant thing these dialects had in common. The 
influx of French words into their vocabulary was about 
the same in each, and occurred at about the same 
period. On whatever other points they differed, here 
they agreed. The Norman conquest did not bring 
Scotland under the sway of a foreign race, nor were 
the Scottish Lowlands parcelled out arr\png a body 
of nobles who spoke a strange tongue ; yet French 
words penetrated at about the same time, and to- 
about the same extent, not only into the English 
spoken on both sides of the Humber, which divided 



Early English Dialects. 97 

the Northern dialect from the Midland, but also into 
the English spoken on both sides of the Tweed, which 
divided the two kingdoms. In the fourteenth century 
the language of Barbour, the Archdeacon of Aber- 
deen, shows as much the trace of French influence as 
does that of his contemporary Chaucer, the comptroller 
of the port of London. The introduction into our 
tongue of the Romance element was in no sense pecul- 
iar to the speech of any one dialect or any one dis- 
trict of country : it was a general linguistic movement, 
which extended to every place where English was 
spoken at all. 

The great radical distinction between the speech of 
the North and of the South was, that the latter was 
extremely conservative in holding on to its grammati- 
cal inflections ; while the former let them go rapidly. 
The language of the South may, perhaps, be spoken 
of as more especially the descendant of the West- 
Saxon dialect, the classical Anglo-Saxon of our fathers ; 
yet it was far from adhering to it so closely that great 
variations did not speedily arise. It exhibited, for 
instance, in course of time, peculiar pronominal forms, 
such as is , his, lies, meaning ' them,' for which there is 
nothing corresponding to be found in the monuments 
that have been preserved of the earliest speech. Still 
it clung as firmly as it well could to the original forms 
and inflections ; and whatever it gave up, it gave up 
reluctantly. We have no such means for tracing the 
linguistic history of the North as we have that of the 
South ; for, from about the end of the tenth century 



98 English Language. 

to the end of the thirteenth, no works were written in 
the language spoken in or descended from that spoken 
in the ancient Northumbria j or, if written, they have 
not been preserved. But it is evident that the devel- 
opment of the Northern dialect was in the sharpest 
contrast to that of the Southern. It abandoned its 
inflections without hesitation. The works produced in 
it in the fourteenth century show, that, in its rejection 
of grammatical form, it had even then frequently gone 
farther than the English we use has now, or, at any 
rate, had shown a disposition to go farther. One or 
two illustrations are all that will be needed at this 
point. The ending s of the genitive is often dropped : 
man saul appears for ' man's soul.' So is the ending 
s of the third person singular of the present, and the 
ed of the preterite, seen in such expressions as he 
think, 'he thinks,' an<J in he curnand, 'he commanded.' 
In fact, in the fourteenth century the Northern dialect 
had moved so far to the form now exhibited by Mod- 
ern English, that a work written at that time, if printed 
in the existing orthography, would present but few and 
slight difficulties to the ordinary reader, so far as inflec- 
tions and grammatical constructions are concerned. 

It was in respect to slowness or swiftness of change 
that the great characteristic difference manifested itself 
between the speech of the North and of the South. 
In some cases as a result of this, in others entirely 
independent of it, the two dialects showed marked 
divergences : these were partly orthographical, partly 
lexical, partly grammatical. A few illustrations will be 



Differences between the Dialects. 99 

given to make this statement perfectly clear; those 
peculiarities being chosen by preference which have 
maintained themselves in Modern English. First, as 
regards orthography. The Southern dialect was in- 
clined to use the letter v for/, a tendency which was 
unknown to the North ; thus the Anglo-Saxon fox, a 
'fox,' dcci&fixen, a ' female fox/ became in the South- 
ern dialect vox and vixen ; and Modern English has 
retained the original form of the one, and the altered 
fonn of the other. Again : the South was apt to turn 
the Anglo-Saxon c into ch, especially before the vowels 
e, i, and y, and at the end of a syllable ; whereas this 
letter was represented in the North by its equivalent &, 
the sound of which the Anglo-Saxon c had under all 
circumstances. Accordingly the Anglo-Saxon cyrice, 
'church,' became in the Southern dialect chirche, in 
the Northern kirk, still preserved in the Scottish ; the 
Anglo-Saxon cernan, 'to churn/ and cist, a 'chest/ 
became in the South chime and chist, and in the 
North kirn and kist, the two latter of which are also 
retained in the dialectic speech of the North, includ- 
ing the Scottish. Again : the Anglo-Saxon secan, ' to 
seek/ appeared respectively in the speech of the two 
regions as seche{ii) and seke(ii). In the simple verb 
we now use the Northern form, but in the compound 
beseech we follow the South. As regards lexical differ- 
ences, the Northern dialects adopted a number of 
Scandinavian words, brought in by the invasion and 
settlement of the Norsemen. Comparatively few of 
these found their way into the South ; though some of 



ioo English Language. 

them were adopted into the speech of the Midland 
dialects, especially in those counties which had shared 
in the conquest of the Danes, and in this way they 
have been transmitted to Modern English. The North- 
ern local dialects naturally retain them in somewhat 
large numbers ; as, for one instance that will do for 
many, the word gar, ' to cause,' may be adduced. This 
comes directly from the Norse verb gora. As regards 
grammatical differences, besides the general tendency 
of the North to drop inflections altogether, and the 
South to retain them as long as possible, there was 
one very marked characteristic difference. The plural 
of the present tense of the verb in the Northern dia- 
lects either ends in -s, or drops the termination entire- 
ly ; in the Southern it ends in -th, the former following 
in the ending in -s the old Northumbrian dialect, the 
latter the West-Saxon. Men say would therefore be 
represented respectively by men says and men say- 
eth. These peculiarities lasted down in the literary 
language to a comparatively late period, though in 
modern editions the text is, in this respect, silently 
changed whenever possible. The usage can be seen 
in the following illustrations : — 

O father Abraham, what these Christians are 
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect 
The thoughts of others. 

Shakspeare, Merchant of Venice, act i. scene 3. 

A board groaning under the heavy burden of the beasts 
that cheweth the cud. — Fletcher, Woman-Hater, act i. 
scene 2. 



Differences between the Dialects. ioi 

Another marked difference was the preference ex- 
hibited by the Southern dialect for plurals in -en in the 
case of nouns. This was based upon the Anglo-Saxon 
plural in -an, of which oxen in Modern English is the 
only genuine survival. But the termination was added 
in the Southern dialect to many nouns which etymolo- 
gically had no right to it : it was even given sometimes 
to those ending originally in -as, of which the repre- 
sentative was strictly -es. On the other hand, the 
Northern dialect had scarcely any plurals in -en at all, 
nearly all nouns forming their plurals in -es or -s. 

Between these two dialects stood that of the Mid- 
land counties, not merely in respect to position, but in 
respect to language also. It partook, to a large extent, 
of the peculiarities of each \ while in some particulars 
it was independent of both. It is hard to affirm or to 
deny that it is a direct descendant of the West-Saxon. 
If we maintain the former view, we shall have to admit 
that some of its distinguishing characteristics must 
have come from a dialect or dialects existing in the 
Anglo-Saxon period, which, however widely employed 
in colloquial speech, left no trace of itself or of them- 
selves in written literature. On the other hand, it fol- 
lows so closely, in many respects, the West-Saxon, that, 
if not directly derived from it, we must assume for it a 
descent from some dialect having very near relation- 
ship with that tongue. 

Thus, as we have seen, in the early part of the 
fourteenth century three great dialects existed in 
Britain, each calling itself English, each possessing a 



102 English Language, 

literature of its own, and each seemingly having about 
the same chance to become the representative national 
tongue. Of these three it was the Midland that 
became the language of literature, — the language we 
speak and write to-day; and its supremacy has in- 
volved, as one result, the degradation of the other two, 
with all their varieties, to the condition, in general, of 
local patois, maintaining themselves as the speech of 
the rude and uneducated only, and destined, with the 
greater spread of education, to ultimate extinction. 
Several circumstances concurred to give predominance 
to the Midland dialect. In the first place, it covered 
a larger extent of territory than cither of the others. 
In particular, the strength of the Northern dialect as a 
rival was much weakened by the fact that no small 
portion of the region in which it was spoken had from 
an early period been separated from England, and 
been placed under the rule of the king of the Scots. 
In the second place, the Midland was the speech of 
the district in which the two universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge were situated \ and all the powerful 
linguistic influences that flowed from these two great 
centres of higher education were constantly at work 
to extend the supremacy of the form of speech heard 
in them. These influences were, moreover, aided by 
the fact that this dialect was in its nature a compro- 
mise between the two found on each side of it, and 
could, therefore, be much more readily adopted by 
both than could either by the other. In the third 
place, there is little doubt that the Midland was the 



Rise of the Midland Dialect. 103 

speech mainly employed at the court and the capital, 
as the French was gradually displaced from its position 
as the language of social intercourse. All of these 
contributed to give it special prominence as the 
dialect destined to become the representative one of 
the whole nation. Yet, powerful as these various 
agencies were in themselves, they were insufficient to 
establish its supremacy over the rest, and cause them 
to sink into subordinate positions, of which not only 
others would be conscious, but which would be ac- 
knowledged by themselves. No really national lan- 
guage could exist until a literature had been created 
which would be admired and studied by all who could 
read, and taken as a model by all who could write. 
It was only a man of genius that could lift up one 
of these dialects into a pre-eminence over the rest, or 
could ever give to the scattered forces existing in any 
one of them the unity and vigor of life. This was the 
work that Chaucer did. He it was that first showed to 
all men the resources of the language, its capacity of 
representing with discrimination all shades of human 
thought, and of conveying with power all manifesta- 
tions of human feeling. His choice of the Midland, 
or rather the fact of his writing in it, raised it at once 
into a position of superiority which was never after- 
wards disputed. His productions, scattered everywhere, 
unconsciously affected the speech of all who read, and 
were consciously looked upon by all who set out to 
write as the authoritative standard of expression. The 
words and grammatical forms he used, the syntactical 



104 English Language. 

methods of construction he followed, became the ones 
generally adopted by his successors. With him, in- 
deed, began the exercise of that great conservative 
restraint which literature throws about language, which 
arrests all sudden changes, and which, so long as it 
operates unimpaired, renders revolution or anarchy in 
the speech an impossibility. 

It has already been stated that the Midland dialect 
was not altogether uniform ; and that it has been di- 
vided into that of the Eastern and of the Western 
counties. It was in the former of these that Chaucer 
wrote. To speak with absolute precision, it is there- 
fore to be said that the cultivated English language, in 
which nearly all English literature of value has been 
written, sprang directly from the East Midland variety 
of the Midland dialect. To that it owes the forms of 
its words and its leading grammatical characteristics, 
though in these respects it has likewise been influenced 
in particulars by the speech both of the North and of 
the South. 

The Scotch Dialect. — But, while these three 
dialects were in use in England, it was the Northern 
alone that was spoken in Scotland ; and, as the Scotch 
is the only dialect of English that can be said to have 
a literature of its own, a brief account of it is here in 
place. This Northern dialect had in that country 
gradually spread itself on every side from its original 
centre in the South, had crossed the Forth, and, 
steadily pressing back the Celtic tongues, had in the 
fourteenth century made its way along the coast as 



The Scotch Dialect. 105 

far as the Moray Firth. The political separation of 
England and Scotland, at a period when no literary 
standard existed anywhere, would of itself have been 
almost certain to develop, in process of time, differ- 
ences in the speech of both, even had it been precisely 
the same in the beginning. But a special cause 
increased a divergence that was in any event sure to 
take place to a certain extent. While, in the one 
country, it was the Midland dialect that became the 
ruling one, in the other it was the Northern, — the only 
one known there at all. Accordingly the literary 
language in Scotland had a linguistic development in 
some measure independent of that found south of the 
Tweed. At the same time, it is not to be forgotten 
that Scotch, as an epithet applied to speech, meant 
originally the Erse of the Celtic inhabitants ; that 
what we call the Scotch tongue, or dialect, is really 
English, and, moreover, that it was invariably called 
English by the men who wrote in it during the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries, and generally by those 
who wrote in it during the sixteenth. It was then, 
however, sometimes designated as the Scotch tongue, 
as opposed to the English ; but after the union of the 
two countries by the accession, in 1603, of James to 
the English throne, it sank from its independent posi- 
tion, and came to be considered and called the Scotch 
dialect of the English language. 

Scotch literature may be said to begin with John 
Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, who died in 1395, 
but finished in 1375 a long historical poem called " The 



io6 English Language. 

Bruce/' in which he celebrated the deeds of Robert 
Bruce. It has been several times printed, and contains 
between thirteen and fourteen thousand lines. He 
was followed, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, 
by Andrew of Wynton, prior of the monastery of St. 
Serf, in the Isle of Loch Leven, who wrote in nine 
books the " Orygynal Cronykil of Scotland." Of the 
works attributed to James I., who reigned nominally 
from 1406 to 1437, and actually ruled the country 
from 1424 to 1437, the only one certainly known to 
be his is "The Kinges Quhair," a poem of nearly four- 
teen hundred lines, in praise of the daughter of the 
Earl of Somerset, who afterwards became his wife. In 
the latter half of the fifteenth century the legendary 
exploits of Wallace were celebrated in a poem of nearly 
twelve thousand lines, attributed to Henry the Min- 
strel, or Blind Harry as he is commonly called. A 
number of poetical compositions were produced also 
at this time by Robert Henryson of Dunfermline. 
Among his writings may be mentioned a collection of 
thirteen fables, and "The Testament of Cresseid," a 
sequel to the Troilus and Cressida of Chaucer. The 
greatest name of all this early period is William Dunbar, 
who flourished from about 1460 to about 1520, and whose 
works were both numerous, and varied in their char- 
acter. Contemporary with him was Gawin Douglas, 
Bishop of Dunkeld, whose most famous production 
was his translation of Virgil. But perhaps the poet 
of the sixteenth century who was then most popular, 
and continued to be so down even to the last century, 



The Scotch Dialect. 107 

was Sir David Lyndsay. His works are specially re- 
markable as having exerted great influence in helping 
forward the cause of the Reformation. The later 
literature in the Scotch dialect, after the union of the 
crowns, is very rich, particularly in ballad and lyric 
poetry, and is much of it of an order of merit to 
which the literature before the union can rarely lay 
claim. This latter, indeed, has received much praise 
from some ; but to most readers the works belonging 
to it are apt to seem uninteresting, and they are 
certainly very long. In spite of the excellence of 
occasional passages, and even of occasional poems, 
it must be said of early Scottish literature, that, taken 
as a whole, it requires patience to read it, and pa- 
triotism to admire it. 

The particular variety of the Northern dialect 
which was adopted in literature while Scotland re- 
mained an independent kingdom was that spoken in 
Edinburgh and its neighborhood. This was naturally 
affected somewhat by the Celtic speech, with which 
it came into close contact ; and the long alliance with 
France introduced into it from that tongue a large 
number of words never used, either in conversation or 
in writing, south of the Tweed. The influence of 
Chaucer, both on style and manner of treatment, is, 
however, very noticeable in the compositions of several 
of the early Scotch poets ; and it is a signal illustration 
of the power over the development of a language 
exerted by an author of great genius, that many forms 
characteristic of the Midland or Southern dialect, but 



108 English' Language. 

foreign to the Northern, were introduced from his 
works into the variety of the latter dialect in which 
early Scotch literature was composed, though they 
seem never to have maintained themselves there. 
The superiority of English literature could not, indeed, 
fail to make itself felt in the case of tongues so nearly 
allied. Still, had the two countries continued to be 
separate nationalities, differences in the speech would 
have become thoroughly established ; and in the 
Island of Great Britain there would have been two 
sister languages as distinct from one another as are, 
for instance, Spanish and Portuguese. But the union 
of the two crowns at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century reduced the Scottish, from the position of a 
tongue independent of the English, to that of a dialect 
of it. Having no longer any common literary stand- 
ard within its borders, it speedily diverged into a 
number of local dialects, each of which has peculiari- 
ties of its own due to its surroundings, and all of 
which, when used in literature, have been largely 
affected by the influence of the standard English. 
No small share of the poetry composed in what is 
called the Scotch dialect is Scotch rather in name 



than in reality : it is literary English clothed in Scot- 
tish spelling, and rendered only a little more strange 
by the introduction of a few provincial words. Of 
course, in such a statement, it is only the written lan- 
guage that is considered, not the spoken ; for the 
Scotch pronunciation varies widely in some respects 
from that of the classical tongue. But this adoption 



The Scotch Dialect. 109 

of forms and grammatical constructions belonging to 
the English of literature shows, that, even in this 
peculiar home of the Northern dialect, the Midland 
has, here as elsewhere, proved too powerful for its 
ancient rival. 



i 



CHAPTER VII. 
CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 

It is with the Middle English period that English 
literature in the limited but strictly proper sense of 
the word may be said to begin. The production of 
writings of a character so high as to be recognized 
everywhere as an authoritative standard of expression 
could not fail to have an immediate effect upon the 
future of the language. It was the one great result of 
the influence now brought to bear upon it, that, from 
the end of the fourteenth century, our tongue has 
pursued an orderly development. It suffers changes, 
and, indeed, constant changes, both in grammar and 
in vocabulary : if it did not, it would no longer be a 
living speech. But these changes take place within 
certain well-defined limits ; they require the consent 
of vast numbers, sometimes of generations ; they are 
spread over great spaces of time. The conservative 
and restraining influence of literature over language 
necessarily grows more powerful with every successive 






no 



Changes in the Middle English Period, 1 1 1 

century, because literature itself is read and studied 
by constantly increasing numbers. The changes that 
have taken place during the five hundred years that 
have gone by since the beginning of the Middle Eng- 
lish period bear not the slightest comparison, in either 
extent or importance, with those that took place 
during the two hundred years before that period. 
How comparatively insignificant the former are has 
already been fully exemplified in the extract which has 
been given from Chaucer, with the ancient spelling in 
one case preserved, and in the other case with it mod- 
ernized. 1 An examination of these shows clearly that 
it is the difference of orthography, far more than the 
difference of vocabulary and of construction, that 
makes the language of the fourteenth century seem 
difficult. 

English, therefore, from this time forth, enters upon 
an entirely new history. Its changes during the 
various periods since have been changes in degree, 
but never in kind. In order to comprehend clearly 
the character of the transitions through which it has 
gone during the past five hundred years, it is necessary 
to have well in mind one or two principles that under- 
lie the development of language. It has already 
been pointed out, that, in the speech of rude and 
ignorant men, grammatical changes take place rapidly ; 
whereas, under ordinary circumstances, few new words 
are added to the vocabulary. This fact becomes very 
noticeable when a cultivated tongue ceases to be used 

1 Pages 79, 80. 



1 1 2 English Language. 

any longer by the educated, and is heard only from 
the mouths of the illiterate. The variations which 
spring up under such circumstances are easy of obser- 
vation, because we have an ideal standard preserved by 
which to compare the present with the past. But the 
precise reverse of this condition of things is true of 
any language in which is embodied the spoken and 
written speech of a cultivated people. In it no sud- 
den alterations can be made in the grammar, because 
great literary models have given permanent form 
and character to that which already exists. Nor can 
violent alterations be ever made without a revolution 
mighty enough to upset the language itself in its exist- 
ing form. While, therefore, in a cultivated speech, 
changes in inflection and syntax do take place, they 
invariably take place slowly and on a small scale ; 
and, if they happen to attract observation at the time, 
they never succeed in establishing themselves without 
a struggle. On the other hand, the vocabulary is 
constantly increasing. The domain of knowledge is 
always widening ; and new terms are constantly needed 
to express the new facts which the many-sided activity 
of the race has gathered, and the new ideas it has 
conceived. An existing vocabulary, therefore, can- 
not for any long period satisfy the demand made upon 
it ; or, in other words, a living tongue can never 
become what is called fixed until the men who speak 
it get to be intellectually dead. There is, in conse- 
quence, an absolute necessity resting upon every 
generation, either of developing new words from exist- 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 113 

ing roots, or of imposing new senses upon words 
already in use, or of borrowing strange words from 
foreign tongues ; and in modern languages it will be 
found that these three agencies are in active operation 
side by side. 

From the beginning of the Middle English period 
till the present time, aversion to grammatical change, 
with consequent slowness in its adoption, and fondness 
for new or foreign words, and facility in their formation 
or introduction, have been especially characteristic of 
our tongue. During the first two centuries the former 
feeling had the least influence ; during the last three 
the latter has made itself more conspicuous. The 
composite character of the vocabulary had been es- 
tablished by the middle of the fourteenth century ; by 
the end of it the language had received and assimilated 
nearly all the words it has ever taken from the Old 
French. During the fifteenth century there was not 
very much addition from any quarter. It was not 
until the close of the Middle English period that new 
words began to come in in large numbers, and then, 
as a general rule, they were taken directly from the 
Latin. This smallness of addition to the vocabulary 
was mainly due to the failure of the intellectual move- 
ment that had begun so auspiciously in the latter 
half of the fourteenth century. Chaucer died in 1400 ; 
but he left no successors to his genius or his authority ; 
and, for one hundred and fifty years after his death, 
literature was in a state of collapse. As, therefore, 
the lexical changes were slight, it is the grammatical 



H4 English Language. 

changes that are for us, during this period, the matter 
of chief importance. 

In these the two counteracting influences that liter- 
ature exerts over language began to show themselves 
at once. One of them is the tendency to produce 
uniformity, the other the tendency to arrest all change ; 
no matter in either case whether the result is to be de- 
sired or to be deplored. From the conflict of these 
opposing agencies the grammatical forms of the lan- 
guage came out at the end of the Middle English 
period what we now find them. The reduction to 
uniformity that was then effected has never since been 
disturbed : the anomalies that were then left in our 
speech have remained with us still. Here the most 
important of the changes that took place are all that 
can be given. 

Declension of Nouns. — In the writings of 
Chaucer a number of nouns still failed to form their 
plurals in -s, according to what had by that time be- 
come the regular ending. Some of them terminated 
in -n, either in strict accordance with the original 
Anglo-Saxon declension in -an ; others had had that 
termination added by what had originally been a 
blunder, but which blunder had in his time become 
correct usage. By the middle of the sixteenth century 
all of the former class had passed over to the regular 
formation in -$, with the single exception of oxen. 
Eyen or eyne may also be found along with eyes, but 
then, as occasionally now, only in poetry ; and the same 
statement is true of one or two other words. Of the 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 115 

latter class, children (A. S. cildru) and brethren (A. S. 
brothru) and kine (A. S. cy) still retain an n to which 
etymologically they are not entitled \ but, in the six- 
teenth century, the regular forms brothers and cows 
established themselves alongside, and have for most 
purposes supplanted the older plurals. So, again, in 
Chaucer, a number of nouns are found with the plural 
of the same form as the singular. They are usually 
descendants of the Anglo-Saxon neuter noun of tKe 
vowel-declension, many of which had the nominative 
and accusative plural the same as the nominative and 
accusative singular. Some of these also assumed the s. 
Thing and year, for illustration, were originally plural 
as well as singular ; but they added during this period 
the final -s. 

Declension of the Third Personal Pro- 
noun. — The only change of importance in the pro- 
noun that took place during the Middle English 
period was in the plural of the pronoun of the third 
person. In Chaucer this had they in the nominative, 
but, in the genitive and objective, here and hem, the 
descendants of the forms used in the Anglo-Saxon. 
In place of these, their and them, corresponding in form 
to the nominative, were substituted in the speech of 
all, as, even as early as the fourteenth century, they 
had been used in the speech of many. 

Inflection of the Adjective. — At the begin- 
ning of the Middle English period the adjective had 
been nearly stripped of the numerous inflections it had 
possessed in the Anglo-Saxon. During the two centu- 



n6 English Language. 

ries that followed, it lost the little it had retained. The 
use of the final e, to denote the plural and the definite 
declension in the singular, was abandoned altogether ; 
and the adjective was left, as we now have it, without 
any inflection whatever. In its comparison the vowel- 
modification, which in some cases it underwent in 
Chaucer and his contemporaries, disappeared before 
the middle of the sixteenth century. Long and strong 
and old, at the beginning of the Middle English period, 
had for comparatives lenger, strenger, and elder ; at the 
end of it, they had the regular forms, longer, stronger, 
and older, now in use ; though the last-named word, 
old, still retained, as at present, both forms. 

Inflection of the Verb. — The fact has already 
been mentioned, that, after the Norman conquest, the 
disposition became widely prevalent to drop the final 
n. But, though this was always in operation, it had 
not, even in the time of Chaucer, been carried out to a 
complete result. In his writings the infinitive of the 
verb, and the plural number of both the present and 
the past tenses of the indicative, end in en or e ; thus 
we have to hopen or to hope, they hopen or they hope, 
and they hopeden or they hopede. In the case of the 
past tense it is not at all unfrequent, also, to have the 
final e dropped in pronunciation : it sometimes hap- 
pened in the case of the other two parts of the verb 
that have been mentioned. This tendency to drop the 
n, which had been the prevailing one in the fourteenth 
century, became almost universally established in the 
fifteenth. Ben Jonson in his English Grammar asserts, 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 1 1 7 

that, until about the reign of King Henry VIII. (1509- 
1547), present plurals were found in en. But, though 
they are found at that time, they lingered then, as 
they did at a later period, as survivals of the past, 
rather than as forms in living, current use. Along with 
the n gradually disappeared the final e. It was dropped 
universally during the fifteenth century in pronuncia- 
tion : in some cases it was dropped in the spelling, 
and in other cases retained. 

This same remark is also true of the final e of the 
noun, and, indeed, of all the other parts of speech in 
which it is found. In some cases the e was retained in 
the spelling after it had disappeared from the pronun- 
ciation, as in love, fame, and numerous other words, 
where its retention has been of no use. Again : it has 
been dropped both in spelling and pronunciation, as 
in peyne, pain, trouthe, truth, and blisse, bliss, and also 
in adverbs derived from adjectives, such as brighte, 
lowe, faire, deepe, in which, had it been retained, it 
would have had the one merit of distinguishing one 
part of speech from another. 

There was, as may be inferred, a steady movement 
toward uniformity of inflection during the Middle 
English period. But, while this accomplished much, it 
did not succeed in accomplishing every thing. Anom- 
alous forms still continued to exist. Though sistren 
and doughteren and ton had become sisters and daugh- 
ters and toes, oxen and children had failed to pass over 
into oxes and childers ; though the plural hors and folk 
and year and thing had become horses, folks, years, 



u8 English Language, 

and . things, sheep and deer had not become sheeps 
and deers. Nor did plurals whose form was due to 
vowel modification, such as men, feet, mice, geese, lose 
any of their numbers after the fourteenth century. The 
complete success of any radical movement to bring 
about an ideal uniformity was in a large number of 
instances counteracted by that conservative opposition 
to all change which is a marked characteristic of cul- 
tivated speech. This has been seen in the inflection 
of the noun ; but it most conspicuously asserted itself 
in the conjugation of the verb. Here a movement 
toward uniformity which had been in active operation 
since the break-up of the Anglo-Saxon was finally 
arrested. Not only, indeed, was it arrested, but it 
may be said that a movement in the opposite direction 
started into being, though it has never been productive 
of important results. 

There are in English, as in every other Teutonic 
tongue, two leading conjugations of the verbs, — one 
called the old, or strong, conjugation ; the other, the 
weak, or new. The main distinction between them is 
easy of comprehension. The weak verb, to form the 
past tense, adds, or originally added, a syllable, in 
Anglo-Saxon, de, which, under certain circumstances, 
became te. In a very few cases, also, the vowel of its 
root was varied ; thus, drygan, ' to dry,' formed a pret- 
erite dryg-de ; drypan, 'to drip,' formed the preterite 
dryp-te ; tellan, 'to tell/ formed the preterite teal-de ; 
secan, ' to seek/ formed the preterite soh-te. On the 
other hand, the strong conjugation added nothing to 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 119 

form the past tense, but the vowel of the root in every 
case underwent change ; thus, drinc-an, ' to drink/ 
had in the first person of the preterite singular dranc ; 
glid-a?t, ' to glide/ had for the corresponding form of 
the preterite gldd. For the three centuries immediately 
following the Norman conquest the distinction between 
these two conjugations was largely broken down; but 
the changes that resulted inured to the benefit of only 
one of them. Numbers of verbs originally having the 
strong inflection gave it up, and took the weak in its 
place. So many, indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon strong 
verbs had been wholly lost to the language by the 
beginning of the middle English period, furthermore, 
so many of those that were retained had become weak, 
and the general movement in that direction was so 
decided, that it seemed merely a question of time 
when the strong inflection would disappear entirely. 
But this movement received a check with the creation 
of a great native literature. In fact, the strong con- 
jugation has lost nothing during the past three hun- 
dred years, and has lost but little during the past five 
hundred. One illustration will make this statement 
perfectly clear. " The Canterbury Tales " of Chaucer 
contain more than seventeen thousand lines of poetry : 
an examination of the strong preterites as found in the 
poetry of that work show that of them only the follow- 
ing twelve have in Modern English passed over com- 
pletely or partially to the weak conjugation : — 



120 



English Language. 



lodern English 


Preterites used by 


Modern English 


Infinitives. 


Chaucer. 


Preterites. 


I. carve, 


carf, 


carved. 


2. gnaw, 


gnew, 


gnawed. 


3. glide, 


glod, 


glided. 


4. laugh, 


lough, 


laughed. 


5. leap, 


leep, 


leapt. 


6. quake, 


quok, 


quaked. 


7. shape, 


schop, 


shaped. 


8. starve, 


starf, 


starved. 


9. swell, 


swal, 


swelled. 


10. wash, 


wessch, 


washed. 


11. wax, 


wax, 


waxed. 


12. wield, 


weld, 


wielded. 



The three following, again, had already, in Chaucer's 
time, begun to conform to the tendency, then preva- 
lent, to pass over to the weak conjugation. It will be 
noticed that they have, with him, both weak and strong 
forms ; like thrive, for illustration, which has the double 
preterites throve and thrived. 



Modern English 
Infinitives. 

1. creep, 

2. sleep, 

3. weep, 



Preterites used by 
Chaucer. 

( creep, 
( crepte, 
\ sleep, ) 



\ 



I slepte, 
( weep, 
( wepte, 



f 



Modern English 
Preterites. 

crept, 
slept, 
wept. 



Again : the four following verbs, inflected strong by 
Chaucer, have in Modern English both a strong and 
weak inflection, though, in the case of climb and help, 
the strong preterite is poetic or provincial. 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 121 



Modern English 
Infinitives. 

I. climb, 



2. crow, 

3. heave, 

4. help, 



Preterites used by 
Chaucer. 

clomb, 



crew, 

haf, 

halp, 



Modern English 
Preterites. 

clomb, 
climbed. 



(do 
I clii 



{crew, 
crowed. 
ihove, 
heaved. 
( holp, 
( helped. 



On the other hand, four of the verbs inflected by 
Chaucer according to the weak conjugation have, by 
a kind of counter-movement, passed over to the strong, 
and are now inflected accordingly. Two of them, 
grind and grow, are strong in Anglo-Saxon ; but the 
other two are weak. It ought to be added, that, in 
the case of grind and grow, Chaucer has the strong 
past participle in en. 



odern English 
Infinitives. 


Preterites used by 
Chaucer. 


Modern English 
Preterites. 


1. grind, 

2. grow, 

3. stick, 


grynte, 

growede, 

stikede, 


ground 

grew. 

stuck. 


4. wear, 


wered(e), 


wore. 



Any such examination as this is in its nature partial 
and incomplete ; but it is sufficient to prove the truth 
of the general statement made in regard to the influ- 
ence of literature in arresting the transition of verbs 
from the strong to the weak conjugation. 1 This point, 

1 As Chaucer manuscripts vary to some extent in the form of the pret- 
erites of verbs, it may not be amiss to state that the results given above are 
based upon an examination of the Harleian MS., No. 7,334, edited by Thomas 
Wright. 



122 English Language. 

indeed, needed to be presented sharply, because there 
is a common impression that the strong verbs are dis- 
appearing from our tongue. The impression, however, 
is an entirely mistaken one. None of the strong verbs 
that were left us at the end of the Middle English 
period, more than three hundred years ago, have since 
been lost, though, in a few cases, weak preterite forms 
have arisen since, or, rather, have perpetuated them- 
selves alongside of the strong forms. In fact, the re- 
verse of the common impression is the truth ; for a few 
weak verbs have, in the Modern tongue, passed over 
to the strong conjugation. Even a certain number 
of anomalous verbs of the weak conjugation have 
successfully resisted the tendency, once prevalent, to 
inflect them regularly. Reach, to be sure, has given 
up its older preterite, raught ; but, on the other hand, 
words like teach, catch, and tell, still prefer their pret- 
erites taught, caught, and told, to the forms teached, 
catched, and telled, which have at times been in use. 

These were the main changes that took place dur- 
ing the Middle English period, as the result of the 
two influences that are always at work upon cultivated 
speech. One addition to the inflectional system of 
the verb, and one loss, are also to be noted as having 
characterized the history of the language during these 
two centuries. 

The addition was in the shape of a new method to 
express the relation of present and past time. The 
phrases compounded of parts of the verb be and 
the present participle, such for illustration, as / am 



Changes in the Middle English Period. 123 

going, and / was going, had been in common use 
from the earliest period of the language. During the 
Middle English period were established, also, the 
phrases for the present and the past tense, formed by 
compounding do and did with the infinitive, as in / do 
go, I did go. They did not, to be sure, make then 
their first appearance in our speech ; but it was not 
until the beginning of the fifteenth century that they 
became common, and not until the end of it that they 
became general. 

The loss was the plural form of the imperative 
mood. Originally this mood had two distinct forms 
for the second person of the singular and for that of 
the plural; thus, in the Anglo-Saxon verb helpan, 
'to help,' the form used in the imperative would 
always be help, whenever a single person was ad- 
dressed ; whenever more than one, the form would be 
helpath, which in later English would become and did 
become helpeth. In the fourteenth century the two 
forms had largely come to be confounded ; and by 
the end of the fifteenth the plural ending (e)th had 
disappeared altogether. 

The Middle English period saw, also, the final aban- 
donment of the grammatical gender, and the substitu- 
tion, in its place, of one corresponding to the natural 
distinctions of sex. This was the result of processes 
that had been steadily at work since the Norman 
conquest. In Anglo-Saxon the gender of the noun 
depended not upon its meaning, but upon its ter- 
mination, or method of inflection. Objects with life 



124 English Language, 

were, in consequence, sometimes neuter; while far 
more frequently objects without life were masculine or 
feminine. The early language presents us in this 
respect the same characteristic as the other tongues 
of the Indo-European family, such, for instance, as 
Latin, Greek, or the modern German. Thus, in Anglo- 
Saxon, wify 'woman,' 'wife/ was neuter. Again, mM, 
6 mouth,' and /6>5, i tooth,' were masculine \ tunge, 
'tongue,' and nas-it, 'nose,' were feminine; edge, 
'eye,' and edre, 'ear,' were neuter. It is evident 
that the system of denoting gender, whatever it may 
have been at the beginning, had now become a purely 
conventional one ; and one great compensation for the 
loss of inflection was, that with it this system neces- 
sarily disappeared. A gender which depended upon 
differences of termination and declension could not 
continue to flourish after those differences had been 
swept away ; and, when to this loss was added the still 
more important loss of the inflection of the adjective 
and the adjective pronouns, every method of denoting 
it was gone. The consequence was, that it was the 
meaning that decided the gender to which the noun 
should be ascribed ; and this necessarily brought the 
gender into harmony with the real distinctions of sex. 
The breaking-down of the grammatical system began 
immediately after the conquest. The substitution of 
the natural system may be said to have been mainly 
effected before the beginning of the Middle English 
period ; by the end of it, the change had become 
perfectly established. Since that time, it is only in 



Changes in the Middle English Period, 125 

the language of poetry, or of passion, affectionate 
or inimical in its character, that objects without life 
are personified, or objects with life are spoken of as 
things ; nor would even this be possible, had not a 
few of the pronouns still retained a separate inflection 
for distinction of sex. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
MODERN ENGLISH. 

Up to this time in the nomenclature of the periods 
of the English tongue, and in the dates assigned to 
them, there has been among scholars a wide diversity 
of usage. In regard to the latest period, however, 
there is a pretty substantial agreement. The begin- 
ning of Modern English is by most writers referred to 
the middle of the sixteenth century ; by some it is 
specifically reckoned from the accession of Queen 
Elizabeth, which took place in 1558. 

No dates can ever be given in the history of the 
development of any tongue, against which some ob- 
jections cannot be brought. For convenience of 
reference, a further subdivision of Modern English is 
desirable. In this work it will be separated into the 
three following periods. The first extends from 1550 
to the year of the restoration of the Stuarts in the fol- 
lowing century, that is to 1660 ; the second, from 1660 
to a point in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 

and in this the year 1 789, the date of the breaking out 
126 



Modem English, 127 

of the French Revolution, affords a convenient ter- 
minus ; the third period extends from 1 789 to the 
present time. Though the divison is made primarily 
for convenience of reference, it will be found, that, on 
the whole, it is a satisfactory division for the historical 
treatment of both the language and the literature. 

It has been pointed out in the previous chapter, 
that, in highly-cultivated tongues, changes in gram- 
mar always take place slowly ; while changes in vo- 
cabulary, particularly in the nature of additions to it, 
meet with no opposition, or with comparatively little. 
In early speech, men think mainly of what they are 
going to say, not of the way in which they are to say 
it ; and the hearer or reader likewise cares so much 
more for the matter, that he does not consciously give 
much heed to the manner. In later times all this is 
reversed. The vehicle of the thought has then become 
a subject of consideration independent of the thought ; 
that is, language has begun to be studied for itself, as 
well as for what it conveys. When any tongue has 
reached this point of development, the opposition 
to change in established forms of expression is sure 
to become exceedingly powerful ; for against such 
changes are arrayed all the authority of past usage, 
and all the prejudice in favor of what actually is ex- 
isting, and has been found to do, though perhaps 
clumsily, the work demanded of it. In fact, it may be 
said that these changes never succeed in making 
themselves adopted, until the necessity for them is 
imperious enough to over-ride the protests of profes- 



128 Ejtglish Language. 

sional purists, and the feeling of dislike to innova- 
tion which becomes almost a second nature in the 
cultivated users of speech. 

True as these statements are of any tongue, they 
are especially true of Modern English. While the 
lexical changes have been comparatively numerous, 
both in the meanings given to old words and in the 
actual introduction of entirely new words, the gram- 
matical changes have been on a very limited scale. 
In the inflection of the noun there have been none 
at all ; in the adjective there could be none, because, 
at the beginning of the Modern English period, it had 
already been reduced to the root form. In the pro- 
noun and the verb there have taken place certain 
changes, and of these an account of the most impor- 
tant will now be given. 

Inflection of the Pronoun. — The latter half 
of the sixteenth century witnessed the rise, or at least 
the general prevalence, of a confusion in the use of 
the nominative and objective cases of the personal 
pronouns and of the interrogative who, which in some 
instances has been perpetuated to our time in litera- 
ture, and in many more still survives in colloquial 
speech. Ye, for illustration, in the language of Chau- 
cer, invariably denotes the nominative ; you, the objec- 
tive ; and this distinction will still be found observed 
in the authorized version of the Bible. But in the 
sixteenth century this distinction began to break down, 
and before the first period of Modern English was 
completed the two forms were used interchangeably 



Modem English. 129 

for each other. At the present time the original 
nominative ye, though occasionally found, is practi- 
cally supplanted by the form you, which originally 
belonged only to the dative and to the accusative. 
But, besides this, colloquial speech, and to no slight 
extent literature, have preserved and perpetuated to 
our time expressions in which / and me, he and him, 
who and whom, and several others, are confounded 
with each other, and furnish a vast field for never- 
ending discussions as to correctness of usage. 

Of all the parts of speech the pronoun is the most 
adverse to the introduction of any new forms ; yet to 
its limited number the close of the sixteenth century 
saw the addition of its. The genitive of it (originally 
hit) is etymologically his ; but this is also the genitive 
of he. It was inevitable that confusion should arise 
in the use of this one form as applied equally to an 
object with life and to one without life, as soon as 
the system of grammatical gender had passed away. 
Confusion did arise; and expedients, of all kinds 
were resorted to for the sake of 1 securing clearness. 
Sometimes, as is the case in the English Bible, of 
it and thereof were used ; sometimes the was em- 
ployed, as in this example from Bacon, "that which 
retaineth the state and virtue ; " and, more frequently 
still, it was used itself as a genitive. Both the and it 
were very commonly joined with own, making such 
phrases as the own and it own. The most usual 
method to avoid ambiguity was, however, to change 
the construction of the sentence. All these difficulties 



130 English Larignage. 

led to the formation of its. The first record of its 
appearance in print that has yet been found belongs 
to the year 1598; and its infrequency is made con- 
spicuous by the fact that it appears but ten times in 
Shakspeare's works. With Ben Jonson it is much 
more common, and by the middle of the seventeenth 
century it had become thoroughly established ; though 
the fact that Milton uses it but three times in his poe- 
try, and rarely in his prose, shows that in the minds 
of some there was a prejudice still lingering against 
it. By the end of that century, however, its com- 
paratively recent origin seems to have been entirely 
forgotten. 

Inflection of the Verb. — In the verb the in- 
flectional changes have been of more importance. 
One of them is purely special. This is the transition 
of the form be of the substantive verb from the indica- 
tive to the subjunctive mood. In Elizabethan Eng- 
lish they be is found constantly alongside of they 
are ; just as it is yet, in those two great conservators 
of archaic expression, — the language of poetry and 
of low life. In the latter it still occurs constantly, in 
the former occasionally ; but it early began, in literary 
prose, to be confined to the subjunctive mood ; and 
this has now become the established practice in the 
ordinary cultivated speech. 

A second change has been the gradual substitution 
of -s for -th as the termination of the third person 
singular of the present indicative. In the Midland 
dialect of the eastern counties, from which literary 



Modern English. 131 

English directly sprang, this part of the verb ended 
invariably in -th : such was the practice of Chaucer 
and his contemporaries, and their very occasional use 
of the form in -s is due generally to the desire of 
accommodating the rhyme. On the other hand, this 
third person regularly ended in -s in the Northern 
dialect. From this dialect it began to make its way 
into literary English in the former half of the sixteenth 
century. The practice of employing it became more 
and more prevalent, and by the end of that centuiy 
it is found, at least in some writers, full as frequently 
as the form in -th. During most of the first period of 
Modern English the terminations -s and -th flourished 
side by side, neither seeming to have any preference 
in popular estimation ; but, toward the latter part of 
it, the former ending became the one generally used, 
and with the progress of time gradually displaced the 
other. That the termination -th did not die entirely is 
probably due to the influence of the English Bible. 
Though the authorized version of that work appeared 
as late as 161 1, the language used in it belonged, as 
is well known, to the early portion of the preceding 
century. In it the ending is throughout in -th : it 
never, for instance, says he makes, but invariably he 
maketh. To this is due the preservation of the form, 
and the additional fact that it is now almost entirely 
confined to the language of religion. 

There is nothing more supremely characteristic of 
our speech, especially in its later periods, than the 
extent to which it has developed the use of passive 



132 E7iglish Language. 

formations. In this respect it has gone far beyond 
any other cultivated modern tongue. The discussion 
of this belongs mostly to syntax, and needs here noth- 
ing beyond simple reference. But the tendency in 
this direction which the language has long manifested, 
has had, as one result, the addition, during the past 
hundred years, of entirely new verb-phrases, made up 
of the present and past tenses of the substantive 
verb, and of past participles compounded with being. 
The history of this presents a striking instance of the 
difficulty in which the decay of old forms leaves a 
language, and the ingenuity it displays in striking out 
new paths to expression. 

Anglo-Saxon had no special form for the passive ; 
and, to represent the present of that voice, it combined 
the past participle with the present tense of either the 
verbs wesan and beon, ' to be/ or the verb weorftan, 
'to become/ preserved in early English in the form 
worth (en) . But the latter word, in process of time, 
disappeared from the language, and the tenses of the 
substantive verb became the only ones that were com- 
bined with the past participle to express the passive 
relation. 

This it could easily do for the present tense, when 
the verb whose participle was used denoted a feeling 
which was in its nature continuous. 'The man is 
loved, is feared, is admired/ were expressions which 
presented no difficulty nor ambiguity ; but, when the 
verb whose participle was used denoted a simple act, 
the combination of the passive participle with the 



Modem English. 133 

present tense of the verb be had the effect of giv- 
ing to the full verbal phrase, not the sense of some- 
thing which was then actually taking place, but of 
something which had already taken place. It was a 
completed, not an existing action, which was signified 
by it. 'The man is shot, is wounded, is killed,' could 
not well be employed of any thing else than a finished 
result, not of an action going on to a possible result. 
And when the principal verb denoted, according to 
the context, as in many cases it did, sometimes a 
completed, and sometimes continuous action, another 
source of ambiguity was at once added. 

One way taken to avoid the difficulty was to change 
the form of expression. In order to assert, for illus- 
tration, that an individual was in danger of violent 
death, inversions like ' they are killing the man ' were 
introduced. In fact, either changing the expression, 
or the employment of various circumlocutions, became 
the common way of getting rid of the ambiguity. 
Another method, however, sprang up, though its use 
was comparatively limited : this was to join the pres- 
ent of the verb be, almost always when the subject 
was without life, to the verbal substantive in ing, 
governed by the preposition on or in. The preposi- 
tion, in time, took the form of a, or, rather, was cor- 
rupted into it by slovenly pronunciation, and was then 
frequently joined directly to the substantive. In this 
way arose expressions like 'the house is a-build- 
ing,' 'the brass is a- forging/ 'the dinner is a-prepar- 
ing ; ' and from the substantive finally fell away the 



134 English Language. 

preposition, leaving the verbal phrase designed to 
denote the passive relation precisely the same in form 
as the verbal phrase compounded of the substantive 
verb and the present participle. The former, in fact, 
were necessarily limited in number ; for it was rarely 
the case that a subject with life could be given to the 
verbal phrase representing the passive. In ' the house 
is building, 7 and 'the man is building/ it is obvious 
at a glance that the idea conveyed by is building is 
essentially distinct. Nor would the difficulty have been 
removed, had the preposition been retained. 'The 
man is a-eating ' could not by any possibility be looked 
upon as a passive formation, and made to mean that 
the subject of the verb was the object of the action 
signified by the verbal substantive. 

Some other method of expression was felt to be 
necessary : accordingly, in the latter half of the eigh- 
teenth century, a new verb-phrase, made up of the 
substantive verb and the compound past participle, 
came into being. Like the forms compounded with 
do, these phrases were confined to the present and 
preterite tenses. Their use speedily became common ; 
and, though they met with vigorous opposition, they 
were found so clear in meaning, and so convenient in 
practice, that opposition was of no avail. They have 
been adopted by nearly every living writer of repute, 
and may now be considered thoroughly established. 
Double methods of expression, like ' the house is build- 
ing/ and ' the house is being built/ will in some cases 
doubtless continue to exist side by side for a long 



Modern English. 135 

time to come ; but no new ones of the former kind 
will make their way into general use, while there is no 
perceptible limit to the spread of those of the latter. 

These constitute the important inflectional changes 
that have taken place in Modern English. There are 
other grammatical changes, mostly syntactical in their 
nature, into which the limits of this work do not suffer 
us to enter. The character of them may be gathered 
from one or two illustrations. The form of the sub- 
junctive mood still continues to exist in our tongue ; 
but the use of that mood as conveying any shades of 
meaning distinct from that of the indicative passed 
away in the Middle English period. So, also, in the 
first period of Modern English, the double negative, 
as strengthening the negation, was abandoned under 
the influence of the Latin, in which two negatives 
make an affirmative ; but, though given up in the cul- 
tivated speech, the original idiom exhibits all its early 
vitality in the language of low life. Questions like 
these, connected with the history of usage, would 
require a special work for their proper discussion. 

It is in the vocabulary that the greatest changes 
have taken place, and are still taking place, in Modern 
English ; though they have never been of such a kind 
and extent as to affect radically the character and 
continuity of the speech. In general terms, it may 
be said that the losses in words have been compara- 
tively slight \ while the gains have been numerous : but 
these gains are far from having been spread equally 
over the history of the modern tongue. The period 



136 English Language. 

from 1550 to 1660 is especially remarkable for the 
vast number of terms that came into the language, 
especially from the Latin, and to some, though to a 
much slighter degree, from the French, the Spanish, 
and the Italian. The disposition to introduce these 
foreign words had begun in the early part of the six- 
teenth century ; but it did not get under full headway 
until the latter half. It was a natural result of the 
causes then in operation. It was a time of great 
activity and intense excitement. The intellectual im- 
pulse which had been set in motion by the revival 
of letters was still in its first vigor. It had rent the 
Christian Church into two hostile camps, using against 
each other, in defence of their dogmas, all the re- 
sources of the common learning of the past and the 
new learning that was coming in. A world hitherto 
unknown had been laid open to view, and fresh explo- 
rations were constantly bringing to light fresh facts. 
The rapid increase of knowledge and of the develop- 
ment of thought needed new words for their expres- 
sion ; and new words were accordingly introduced with- 
out stint or hesitation. The readiest resource at that 
time, of the English-speaking race, was the Latin ; and 
there was scarcely a single author of that period who 
did not feel himself at perfect liberty to coin from it 
any terms which seemed to him to express more 
exactly the ideas he sought to convey. The conse- 
quence was, that vast multitudes of words came then 
into our tongue, large numbers of which have never 
been collected into our dictionaries, and perhaps, in 



Modem English. 137 

some cases, have never had any existence outside of 
the written speech. Certainly many of them never 
came into general use, and no small proportion of them 
were probably confined to the individual authors who 
invented them. In conformity with the terminology 
previously used, this influx is often called the " Latin 
of the Fourth Period." 

But, at the time of the restoration of the Stuarts, 
the intellectual impulse above mentioned had practi- 
cally spent its force. The period from 1660 to 1789 
was a critical rather than a creative age ; and it added 
but a small amount to the English vocabulary. This 
state of things, however, was again broken up towards 
the close of the eighteenth century. A great political 
and humanitarian movement was in progress through- 
out Europe, which was attended, not merely with a 
social upheaval, but with a general intellectual move- 
ment, which presents many striking resemblances to 
that of the sixteenth century. As regards language, 
it has been followed by two results. During the 
past hundred years, our tongue has shown a marked 
tendency to go back to its older forms, and to revive 
a large number of words that have been kept alive 
only in the provincial dialects ; and this is a ten- 
dency which the constantly-increasing attention paid 
to the study of English in its earlier stages will natu- 
rally accelerate. The second result is the introduction 
of a vast number of new words, which the rapid ad- 
vance in every department of human investigation has 
rendered necessary. Many of these, to be sure, are 



138 English Language. 

nothing but revivals of terms which had previously 
been brought in during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, but had fallen into disuse ; but much the 
larger proportion of them are entirely new coinages. 
Especially is this true in the manifold departments of 
modern science, in which every advance gives birth to 
a number of hitherto unknown words. These, in most 
instances, are taken from the Greek. To a large ex- 
tent they are purely technical in their character ; but, 
with the progress of the arts, a certain number are sure 
to pass into general circulation. Still, in spite of these 
vast accessions, very few old words that were ever in 
common use have been lost ; nor do they, to any great 
extent, suffer change of meaning. The continued and 
indeed ever-increasing popularity of the great writers 
of Modern English is sufficient to prevent the terms 
they use from becoming obsolete, or the language 
itself to wander far away from the forms which they 
have made familiar. 

The fact of English possessing, to a large extent, a 
double vocabulary — one composed of Teutonic, the 
other of Romance words — has given a marked charac- 
ter to the literature of various epochs. Still, at any time, 
a difference of terms employed will always be due to a 
difference of subject. It has already been pointed 
out, that the language of reasoning and philosophy, of 
intellectual processes of any kind, will always make 
extensive use of the Latin element ; while, on the con- 
trary, the language of feeling, in whatever shape mani- 
fested, will be mainly taken from the Teutonic element. 



Modem English. 139 

But, even in treating of subjects of a similar character, 
different writers living at the same time will vary widely 
in their choice of words. Moreover, it may be said 
that the literary speech has shown a constant tendency 
to oscillate between the two vocabularies. During the 
first period, from 1550 to 1660, the Latin influence 
was plainly predominant. It affected, not alone the 
words, but also the construction. The involved and 
stately sentences of Bacon, Hooker, and Milton, belong 
to a species of writing which is no more cultivated : 
indeed, it is only in the dramatists of the Elizabethan 
age, that any thing closely resembling modern prose 
can then be found. In the second period, the two 
elements of the vocabulary were, in the main, harmo- 
niously blended, though during the latter part of it, 
under the influence of Johnson, a temporary re-action 
manifested itself in favor of the Latin. But this 
speedily passed away. On the other hand, during the 
last period of Modern English, and especially at the 
present time, a violent re-action in favor of the Teu- 
tonic element has set in ; so that, in spite of the im- 
mense accessions to the vocabulary from the classical 
tongues, due to the progress of science, it is probably 
true that the proportion of words of native origin used 
by popular writers, as contrasted with those of foreign 
origin, is greater now than at any time during the 
past three hundred years. But the history of the lan- 
guage shows that there is nothing permanent about 
any of these movements, whether in favor of the Teu- 
tonic or of the Romance element of our tongue. Both 



140 English Language. 

are essential to the speech in its present form, and a 
marked preference for the one, to the exclusion of the 
other, can, at best, be never any thing more than a 
temporary fashion. 

Settlement of the Orthography. — It was in 
the second period of Modern English, that the orthog- 
raphy became fixed. In the time of Chaucer it may 
fairly be described as phonetic ; so that, as pronuncia- 
tion varied in different parts of the country, the spell- 
ing necessarily varied with it. One of the results of 
the art of printing was to bring about uniformity on 
this point. It was, however, a result that was very 
gradually reached. The seventeenth century showed 
a marked advance toward uniformity over the six- 
teenth ; and still more decided was the advance of the 
latter part of the seventeenth century over the earlier 
part. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the 
present orthography was pretty nearly established ; 
though in regard to numerous words there was still 
wide diversity of usage. It was not until after the 
publication of Johnson's dictionary, in 1755, that the 
existing spelling can be said to have become univer- 
sally received. That given by him to words has been 
the one generally followed by all later writers ; and 
a deference has sprung up for it which is not justified 
by any thing in its character. Orthography was a 
matter about which Johnson was totally incompetent 
to decide ; and, largely in consequence of the respect 
and even reverence paid still to that which he saw fit 
to employ, the spelling of English is probably the most 



Modern English, 141 

vicious to be found in any cultivated tongue that ever 
existed. It is in no sense a guide to pronunciation, 
which is its only proper office ; and, even for deriva- 
tion (an office for which it was never designed) , it is 
equally worthless, save in the case of words of direct 
Latin origin. 

Wide Extension of English. — During the 
modern period of its history, English has been carried 
over a large share of the habitable globe, and the num- 
ber of those who speak it is constantly increasing. 
Under conditions that existed in former times, this 
fact could be followed but by one result. Different 
tongues would have sprung up in different countries, 
varying from each other, and varying more or less 
from their common mother ; and the differences would 
have constantly tended to become more marked with 
the progress of time. But there are two agencies now 
in existence that will be more than sufficient to prevent 
any such result. These are, first, the common pos- 
session of a great literature accessible to men of every 
rank and every country ; and, secondly, the constant 
interchange of population that results from the facility 
of modern communication. Joined to these is the 
steadily-increasing attention paid to the diffusion of 
education, the direct effect of which is to destroy dia- 
lectic differences, and make the literary speech the one 
standard to which all conform. These agencies become 
year by year more wide-reaching and controlling. The 
forces that tend to bring about unity are now so much 
more powerful than those that tend to bring about 



142 English Language. 

diversity, and the former are so constantly gaining in 
strength, that any marked deviation between the lan- 
guage as spoken in Great Britain and in its Colonies, 
and in America, can now be looked upon as hardly 
possible. 

This brings us directly to the discussion of a ques- 
tion with which the general history of English may 
properly conclude : What is to be the future of our 
tongue ? Is it steadily tending to become corrupt, as 
constantly asserted by so many who are laboriously 
devoting their lives to preserve it in its purity ? The 
fact need not be denied, if by it is meant, that, within 
certain limits, the speech is always moving away from 
established usage. The history of language is the his- 
tory of corruption. The purest of speakers uses every 
day, with perfect propriety, words and forms, which, 
looked at from the point of view of the past, are im- 
proper, if not scandalous. But the blunders of one 
age become good usage in the following, and, in pro- 
cess of time, grow to be so consecrated by custom and 
consent, that a return to practices theoretically correct 
would seem like a return to barbarism. While this 
furnishes no excuse for lax and slovenly methods of 
expression, it is a guaranty that the indulgence in 
them by some, or the adoption of them by all, will not 
necessarily be attended by any serious injury to the 
speech. Vulgarity and tawdriness and affectation, and 
numerous other characteristics which are manifested 
by the users of language, are bad enough ; but it is a 
gross error to suppose that they have of themselves 



Modern English. 143 

any permanently serious effect upon the purity of 
national speech. They are results of imperfect train- 
ing; and, while the great masters continue to be 
admired and read and studied, they are results that 
last but for a time. The causes which bring about the 
decline of a language are of an entirely different type. 
It is not the use of particular words or idioms, it is not 
the adoption of peculiar rhetorical devices, that con- 
tribute either to the permanent well-being or corrup- 
tion of any tongue. These are the mere accidents of 
speech, the fashion of a time which passes away with 
the causes that gave it currency : far back of these lie 
the real sources of decay. Language is no better and 
no worse than the men who speak it. The terms of 
which it is composed have no independent vitality in 
themselves : it is the meaning which the men who use 
them put into them, that gives them all their power. 
It is never language in itself that becomes weak or 
corrupt : it is only when those who use it become 
weak or corrupt, that it shares in their degradation. 
Nothing but respect need be felt or expressed for that 
solicitude which strives to maintain the purity of speech : 
yet when unaccompanied by a far-reaching knowledge 
of its history, but, above all, by a thorough comprehen- 
sion of the principles which underlie the growth of 
language, efforts of this kind are as certain to be full 
of error as they are lacking in result. There has never 
been a time in the history of Modern English in which 
there have not been men who fancied that they fore- 
saw its decay. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth 



144 English Language. 

century on, our literature, whenever it touches upon 
the character of the vehicle by which it is conveyed, 
is full of the severest criticism ; and its pages are 
crowded with unavailing protests against the introduc- 
tion of that which now it hardly seems possible for us 
tu do without, and, along with these, with mournful 
complaints of the degeneracy of the present, and with 
melancholy forebodings for the future. So it always 
has been : so it is always likely to be. Yet the real 
truth is, that the language can be safely trusted to take 
care of itself, if the men who speak it take care of 
themselves ; for with their degree of development, of 
cultivation, and of character, it will always be found in 
absolute harmony. 

In fact, it is not from the agencies that are com- 
monly supposed to be corrupting that our speech at 
the present time suffers : it is in much more danger 
from ignorant efforts made to preserve what is called 
its purity. Rules have been and still are laid down 
for the use of it, which never had any existence out- 
side of the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. 
By these rules, so far as they are observed, freedom of 
expression is cramped, idiomatic peculiarity destroyed, 
and false tests for correctness set up, which give the 
ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in 
others ; while the real error lies in their own imperfect 
acquaintance with the best usage. One illustration 
will be sufficient of multitudes that might be cited. 
There is a rule of Latin syntax that two or more sub- 
stantives joined by a copulative require the verb to be 



Modem English. 145 

in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar 
of English, of which it is no more true than it is of 
modern German. There is nothing in the usage of 
the past, from the very earliest times, to authorize it, 
nothing in the usage of the present to justify it, except 
so far as the rule itself has tended to make general 
the practice it imposes. The grammar of English, as 
exhibited in the utterances of its best writers and 
speakers, has, from the very earliest period, allowed 
the widest discretion as to the use either of the singu- 
lar or the plural in such cases. The importation and 
imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, like the one 
just mentioned, does more to hinder the free develop- 
ment of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of ex- 
pression, than the widest prevalence of slovenliness of 
speech, or of affectation of style ; for these latter are 
always temporary in their character, and are sure to be 
left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or 
forgotten through the change in popular taste. 

Of the languages of Christendom, English is the one 
now spoken by far the largest number of persons ; and 
from present appearances there would seem to be but 
little limit to its possible extension. Yet that it or any 
other tongue will ever become a universal language is so 
much more than doubtful, that it may be called impos- 
sible ; and, even were it possible, it is a question if it 
would be desirable. However that may be, its spread 
will depend in the future, as it has in the past, not so 
much upon the character of the language itself, as 



146 English Language. 

upon the character of the men who speak it. It is 
not necessarily because it is in reality superior to other 
tongues, that it has become more widely extended than 
they, but because it has been and still is the speech of 
two great nations which have been among the fore- 
most in civilization and power, the most greedy in the 
grasping of territory, the most successful in the plant- 
ing of colonies. But as political reasons have lifted 
the tongue into its present prominence, so in the future 
to political reasons will be owing its progress or decay. 
Thus, back of every thing that tends to the extension 
of language, lie the material strength, the intellectual 
development and the moral character, which make the 
users of a language worthy enough and powerful enough 
to impose it upon others. No speech can do more 
than express the ideas of those who employ it at the 
time. It cannot live upon its past meanings, or upon 
the past conceptions of great men which have been 
recorded in it, any more than the race which uses it 
can live upon its past glory or its past achievements. 
Proud, therefore, as we may now well be of our tongue, 
we may rest assured, that, if it ever attain to universal 
sovereignty, it will do so only because the ideas of the 
men who speak it are fit to become the ruling ideas of 
the world, and the men themselves are strong enough 
to carry them over the world ; and that, in the last 
analysis, depends, like every thing else, upon the de- 
velopment of the individual; depends, not upon the 
territory we buy or steal, not upon the gold we mine, 
or the grain we grow, but upon the men we produce. 



Modern English. 147 

If we fail there, no national greatness, however splen- 
did to outward view, can be any thing but temporary 
and illusory ; and, when once national greatness dis- 
appears, no past achievements in literature, however 
glorious, will perpetuate our language as a living 
speech, though they may help for a while to retard its 
decay. 

v 



PART II. 
HISTORY OF INFLECTIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

SOME FEATURES COMMON TO ALL THE TEU- 
TONIC TONGUES. 

I . He who contrasts the English of the Anglo-Saxon 
period with the English of to-day is at once struck by 
the difference between the ancient and the modern 
tongue in respect to vocabulary and to inflection. It 
is with the latter alone that we have to do in the fol- 
lowing pages ) and the history of it is largely a record 
of abandonment of forms once deemed necessary, and 
of confusion in the use of those that were retained. 
Nevertheless, it would be a great error to suppose that 
loss or change of inflection is especially characteristic 
of the later life of our language as distinguished from 
the earlier. Even when our speech made its first ap- 
pearance in a few written monuments of the seventh 
and eighth centuries, it had then already given up 
much that once belonged to it. The stripping of in- 
flections from the English tongue had begun long 
before any productions which have been handed down 
had been composed in it. Many of the irregular forms 

i5* 



152 English Language. 

which are still found at this day owe their existence, 
and their apparently anomalous character, to changes 
which had taken place before a word of our language 
had been committed to writing; in periods, indeed, 
when we have not the slightest knowledge as to where 
even the men lived who spoke our speech. 

2. But, without the aid of written monuments, how 
can we know this to be a fact ? How can we be sure 
that forms once existed in our tongue which have 
never been preserved in its literature ? The answer 
to these questions not only renders necessary an ac- 
count of the characteristics of the inflections pervading 
the earliest period of English, but, to some extent, also 
an examination of certain features which are common 
to it with the other Teutonic tongues. Its precise 
relations to them, the grammatical peculiarities which 
distinguished them all, must be clearly comprehended, 
before the student can understand the reason of the 
general tendencies which have manifested themselves 
in the history of our inflection, or the origin of the 
particular anomalies which are still retained in it. 

3. It has already been stated that English is a 
member of a family of languages, called the Teutonic 
or Germanic, which itself forms one branch of a still 
larger family, termed the Indo-European, or the 
Aryan. 1 All the tongues belonging to the latter have 
come from the same source, and are, therefore, more or 
less remotely allied to one another. But as no record 
of this one primitive Indo-European speech exists, as 

1 See introductory chapter. 



The Primitive Teutonic Speech. 153 

no monuments of it have been preserved, from which 
its words and forms could be gathered, we are under 
the necessity of making out what these words and 
forms must have been, by a comparison, in accordance 
with certain scientific principles, of the languages that 
have been derived from this unknown original tongue. 
Words and forms which are common to all its de- 
scendants, it is very safe to say, must have existed in 
the parent-speech; though naturally they are more 
changed and disguised in appearance, the more 
remote they are from it in time. Looked at from 
this point of view, it may be said, that, as a general 
rule, the older the tongue, the more likely is it to bear 
a closer resemblance to the original from which it 
came. Accordingly, Sanskrit, with a literature going 
back to at least fifteen hundred years before Christ, is 
conceded to be much nearer, in its forms and inflec- 
tions, to the primitive Indo-European, than any of its 
numerous sister-languages. 

4. In the same manner, as regards that branch of 
the Indo-European family to which English belongs, 
there are in existence no monuments of that primitive 
Teutonic speech from which the members of that 
branch have descended. The words and forms con- 
stituting it can only be made out, in the same manner 
as in the case of the primitive Indo-European, by a 
scientific comparison of those found in the derived 
tongues. Necessarily the older languages of this 
branch, monuments of which have been handed down, 
are of the first importance ; and of these the Gothic, 



154 English Language, 

whose scanty literature goes back to the fourth century 
after Christ, must be regarded as presenting, on the 
whole, much the nearest likeness to that theoretical 
primitive Teutonic speech which is the common par- 
ent of all. But the other older languages belonging 
to this sub-family are also of importance. These are 
the Old High German, the Old Norse, and the three 
Low-Germanic tongues, the Old Saxon, including the 
Netherlandish, the Old Frisian, and that English of 
the earliest period which has had given to it in ordi- 
nary usage the name of Anglo-Saxon. 

5. All of these tongues had many things in com- 
mon ; but loss of inflection not only characterized the 
primitive Teutonic as compared with the primitive 
Indo-European, but also characterized the members 
of the Teutonic branch as compared with their imme- 
diate parent. But some of these six oldest tongues 
retained more than others, the Gothic naturally far 
the most of any. Each one of them, however, clung 
to particular forms and inflections which the others 
had partly or wholly given up. Before considering 
the special later history of English, it is therefore 
desirable to point out some general resemblances which 
existed between it in its earliest form, and the sister- 
languages of the same Teutonic branch. Under- 
standing the common basis from which they started, 
the later relations of each to the others not only be- 
come at once much clearer, but the later history of 
our tongue has light thrown upon it by the develop- 
ment which has characterized the others. We shall, in 



Case in the Primitive Teutonic. 155 

this place, limit ourselves to the general features that 
characterize the inflection of the noun, the adjeGtive, 
and the pronoun, in order to make plain the loss sus- 
tained by the .primitive Teutonic as compared with 
the primitive Indo-European, and further the loss of 
the English as compared with the parent Teutonic. 
The characteristics of the verb, so far as they are 
examined at all, will be discussed by themselves. 

6. Case. — The primitive Indo-European had eight 
cases. These were the nominative, the subject of the 
sentence ; the accusative, the case of the direct ob- 
ject ; the dative, the case of the indirect object ; the 
genitive, the case of general relation, or the of case ; 
the instrumental, the case denoting accompaniment 
and means, the with or by case ; the ablative, the case 
denoting separation, the from case ; the locative, the 
case denoting the place where any thing is or is done, 
the at or in case ; and the vocative, or the case of 
address. All of these were originally distinguished by 
difference of ending. But the tendency showed itself, 
from the earliest period of which we have any record, 
to give up one or more of these case-forms, and either 
to supply the place left vacant by another case, gov- 
erned by a preposition, or to make one case do the 
duty of another in addition to its own ; thus, in Latin, 
the ablative was required to perform the instrumental 
relation, and, in Greek, the genitive the ablative rela- 
tion. Of these eight cases the primitive Teutonic still 
retained six, though only four of them could be said to 
exist in full vigor. The two that were entirely lost from 



156 English Language. 

this branch were the ablative and the locative. Two 
others, the vocative and the instrumental, maintained 
a lingering life. A special form for the vocative is 
found in the noun of the Gothic. The instrumental 
is occasionally but clearly seen in the singular of the 
noun and adjective in the Old High German and the 
Old Saxon, and in the demonstrative pronouns of all 
the early Teutonic tongues, save the Old Norse. It is 
likewise regarded by some as belonging to the Anglo- 
Saxon noun and adjective. But the remaining four 
cases are found in all the older languages of this 
branch, including, of course, Anglo-Saxon, and still 
survive in one of them, the New High German. 

7. Number. — The primitive Indo-European had 
three numbers, — the singular, the dual, and the plural. 
In the Teutonic noun and adjective the dual had dis- 
appeared entirely; but, in the personal pronouns of 
the first and second person, it is found in all the six 
earlier languages of this branch, save that, in some of 
them, forms for certain cases are very rare, if not lack- 
ing entirely. 

8. Declension. — There are two declensions of 
the Teutonic noun. But in every tongue belonging to 
this branch there were words which could not be clas- 
sified under either, inasmuch as they were relics of 
declensions once of wide employment in the primitive 
speech, but gone out of use in the Teutonic. These 
words are accordingly so few in number as to be 
properly treated as anomalous. The two declensions 
actually existing are commonly called the vowel or 



Declension in the Primitive Tetctonic. i$j 

strong, and the consonant or weak declension ; but in 
the older languages they underwent still further divis- 
ion. The vowel-declension was split up into three, 
according as one of the short vowels, a or i or u, was 
the final of the formative syllable, or itself the forma- 
tive syllable, added to the radical syllable to make the 
stem ; thus, for illustration, the Gothic word for ' fish ' 
was in the nominative fisks. Of this the radical sylla- 
ble was fisk, to which the short vowel a was added to 
form the stem fiska ; and to this, according to a widely- 
received hypothesis, the demonstrative pronoun sa 
was appended, making an original theoretical form for 
the nominative, fiskasa, which was cut down to fisks, 
the form with which we are familiar. In Anglo-Saxon 
it underwent still further abbreviation, nothing but the 
radical syllable fisc being left in the nominative and 
accusative singular. 

9. In each one of these subordinate declensions in 
a, in i, and in u, the nouns had different inflections, 
according as they were of the masculine, the feminine, 
or the neuter gender ; so that, in the primitive Teu- 
tonic, there were probably nine different inflections 
belonging to the vowel-declension. But this system 
nowhere exists in its theoretical perfection, there being, 
for example, not a single neuter noun belonging to the 
declension in i in any one of the earliest Teutonic 
tongues ; and there are numerous other indications 
that this system was losing everywhere its complex 
character. In particular in the Anglo-Saxon the 
declension in a had practically absorbed the declen- 



158 English Language. 

sion in u, the special terminations of the latter having 
been abandoned, and those of the former having been 
substituted. There was, besides, but very little left of 
the declension in 1, its words having largely gone over 
to the declension in a. 

10. Again : of the primitive Indo-European conso- 
nant declensions, only the one in which the stem ended 
in an was retained in the Teutonic ; of the others, 
but a few words remained. Accordingly the conso- 
nant declension is often called the declension in n. 
This became a favorite declension in the Teutonic 
tongues, and existed in full vigor in all the early ones. 
In them it had inflections somewhat distinct, accord- 
ing as the noun was masculine, feminine, or neuter, 
though these differences were by no means so marked 
as in the vowel declensions. 

11. There is also a third declension, unlike either 
of the two just mentioned, which is found in pronouns 
and adjectives ; but its origin and characteristics will 
be given further on (55). Besides these general fea- 
tures, common to the inflection of the Teutonic noun, 
adjective, and pronoun, there were certain peculiari- 
ties connected with the changes in vowels or conso- 
nants that need to be described here, for they have 
been perpetuated through all periods of English. 
They are not confined, however, to any particular parts 
of speech. 

12. One of these is called rhotacism. This de- 
notes the passing of the letter s into r y — a transition 
which was by no means uncommon in many of the 



Vowel- Variation, 1 59 

Indo-European tongues, and is familiarly exemplified 
in the Latin comparative of the adjective \ as, for in- 
stance, fort-ior, fort-ius. Among the Teutonic tongues 
it was most widely employed in the Old Norse ; but 
in Anglo-Saxon it was occasionally found, especially in 
the inflection of certain verbs. Modern English still 
preserves one trace of it in the imperfect of the sub- 
stantive verb, which has for its singular was, but for its 
plural were instead of wese. 

13. Far more conspicuous and important has been 
and is the part played by vowel-variation. This, as 
used in this work, will be employed to denote any 
change of vowel-sound, no matter from what cause 
arising, that takes place within the radical syllable. It 
will, therefore, denote alike the changes seen in inflec- 
tion in such words as man, men, in sell, sold, in thrive, 
throve, and in the formation of new words from the 
same root, sometimes closely related in meaning, some- 
times widely differing, as may be exemplified by band 
and bond, grave and grove, and numerous others. 
Two kinds of vowel-variation will be defined more 
specifically. 

14. The first is vowel-change (German ablaut). 
This is especially seen in the change of the vowel of 
the radical syllable, by which the inflection of one class 
of verbs was and still is denoted. Familiar examples 
are begin, began; thrive, throve ; tear, tore. This is so 
marked a characteristic of all the Teutonic tongues, 
including the English, that a short account of its ori- 
gin is desirable. 



i6o English Language. 

15. In the primitive Indo-European the preterite 
was originally formed by simple reduplication. The 
verb was a mere root ; and the idea of past time as 
distinguished from present was conveyed by the simple 
process of doubling the root. For instance, if the 
radical syllable vid meant see, saw would be expressed 
by vidvid. Joining these together, so as to make one 
word, and appending the personal endings, we have 
the primitive preterite tense. But in all the languages 
of our family, so many changes early occurred by the 
weakening or strengthening of vowels, that in none of 
them is the original simple reduplication preserved. 
In the primitive Teutonic, reduplication was, as in the 
other Indo-European tongues, the oldest method of 
forming the perfect ; but Gothic, the oldest of all, has 
alone plainly preserved it, there being but faint traces 
of it left in the other languages of this sub-family. 
The Gothic has some forty verbs in which reduplica- 
tion appears \ but, even in that tongue, it had so far 
departed from the theoretical primitive type, that only 
the initial letter of the root was repeated with a con- 
stant vowel-sound denoted by ai (thus, present, blanda, 
' blend,' preterite, baibland, 'blended \ ' present, halda, 
'hold,' preterite, haihald, 'held \ ' present, slepa, 'sleep/ 
preterite, saizlep, ' slept '). But, in the other Teutonic 
dialects, the abbreviation had been carried still further. 
Not only was the final letter or letters of the redupli- 
cational syllable dropped, but the initial letter of the 
radical syllable and, in some cases the vowel also of 
the radical syllable. The reduplicational and radical 



Vowel- Change. 1 6 1 

syllables were thus united into one ; and, in Anglo- 
Saxon verbs of this kind, the result of this contraction 
was a monosyllabic preterite with the diphthong eo 
running through both the singular and the plural. In 
some verbs there was a still further contraction to i. 
Taking the three verbs above given, blandan, healdan, 
and slcbpan, we have, accordingly, in Anglo-Saxon, the 
presents, blande, healde, and sl&pe, the preterites, 
bleo?id, heold, and slip. 

1 6. This was not all. In many verbs an incidental 
effect of the reduplication had been to cause a change 
in the vowel of the radical syllable, either by weaken- 
ing it or strengthening it. This change of vowel, 
originally a mere incident, became, in the course of 
events, systematized ; and a natural result was, that it 
began to be looked upon as denoting of itself the pret- 
erite relation. When it came to be so regarded gen- 
erally, the necessity of the reduplicated syllable to ex- 
press past time disappeared, and the syllable itself was 
accordingly dropped. The vowel-change remaining 
constituted a method of conjugation which is one of 
the most striking peculiarities of the Teutonic branch 
of the Indo-European family. It is only these verbs 
which have dropped the reduplicated syllable that can 
be strictly said to have undergone vowel-change ; but 
as, even in the verbs in which the reduplicational and 
radical syllables have been united into one, there has 
been a variation of vowel, resulting from contraction, 
the latter are also usually included in this class. 

17. The second kind of vowel-variation is in this 



1 62 English Language. 

work termed vowel-modification (German um- 
laut). It is in Modern English exemplified in the 
inflection of a number of nouns, such as man, men ; 
foot, feet ; mouse, mice. It is not only widely differ- 
ent in its character from vowel-change, it is likewise 
widely different in its origin. It was not known to the 
Gothic; it is comparatively infrequent in Old High 
German ; but in the other Teutonic tongues it is preva- 
lent, especially in the Norse. In Anglo Saxon it was 
principally caused by the influence of the vowel i of 
a following syllable. 

1 8. Vowel-modification is the variation of sound 
produced in a radical syllable by the influence of a 
vowel in the syllable added, usually an added inflec- 
tional syllable. It is a noticeable fact, that, under cer- 
tain circumstances, the vowel of an added syllable has 
often a tendency to modify the vowel of the syllable 
to which the addition is made. Before pronouncing 
the vowel of the first syllable, the thought of the vowel 
of the following one comes into the mind. Uncon- 
sciously there is an effort to bring about a similarity 
of sound ; and the result is, that a sound is given to 
the vowel of the first syllable intermediate between the 
sound it had previously and the sound of the vowel in 
the syllable added. This is seen, for illustration, in the 
infinitive of some Anglo-Saxon verbs, in which the a 
of the added syllable has changed the i of the radical 
syllable into e. Thus, to the root hilp, if the termina- 
tion -an of the infinitive be added, the infinitive itself 
becomes, not hilpan, but helpan, our c help.' 



Vowel-Modification, 1 63 

19. But it was the influence of a following i that 
was most conspicuous in Anglo-Saxon in modifying the 
vowel of a preceding syllable ; and the results of this 
influence are still to be seen in Modern English. It 
is not necessary to point out all the variations wrought 
by this vowel ; only those which have been perpetuated 
will be mentioned here. The influence of the i of a 
following syllable changed a of the preceding to <?, 
ea and u to y, to e, and 4 to y. One illustration 
will suffice. The Anglo-Saxon fat, ' foot/ has in the 
nominative and accusative plural /<?/, and also the same 
form in the dative singular. The change of 6 to e in 
these cases of the noun is due to the influence of an z, 
which once belonged to them as an additional syllable, 
but which had come to be dropped. But, though the 
cause disappeared, the effect continued. Men retained 
in their speech the modification wrought by the vowel 
after the fact had been long forgotten that the vowel 
itself had ever been added. 

20. This concludes all that is necessary to be said 
here of the features common to English with the other 
Teutonic tongues. Before entering, however, upon the 
later specific history of the inflection , of our language, 
it is important to have clearly in mind the terminology 
here employed, and, though already given in full, it will 
bear repetition. The history of the language is in this 
work divided into four periods : the first, called the 
Anglo-Saxon, extending from the coming of the Teu- 
tonic tribes to the year 1150; the second, the Early 
English, extending from 1150 to 1350; the third, the 



164 English Language. 

Middle English, from 1350 to 1550; and the fourth, 
the Modern English, from 1550 to the present time. 1 
It is also to be remembered, that, during the Early and 
Middle English periods, the language both of litera- 
ture and of daily life was divided into three great 
dialects, called, from their geographical position, the 
Northern, the Midland, and the Southern ; and that 
literary English is a descendant of the Midland, and 
the Scotch dialect belongs to the Northern. 2 

21. There is still another point which needs special 
consideration before entering upon the internal history 
of our tongue. This is the important fact, that, from 
the beginning of the twelfth century to the middle of 
the fourteenth century, — and the limits might be 
extended, — there was no such thing as standard 
English. Every thing, in consequence, was fluctuating 
and uncertain. No authority existed anywhere, as to 
the use of words and grammatical forms, to which all 
felt themselves obliged to submit. Every writer was, 
to a large extent, a law unto himself, and followed 
the special dialect of his own district in the lack of a 
generally recognized standard which could not be 
safely violated. But a tongue split up into dialects, 
and possessing nowhere binding rules for syntactical 
agreement and arrangement, nor authoritative meth- 
ods of inflection, can hardly be said to have a history 
of any general orderly development of its own. The 
account which is given of it can never be much more 
than a classification of the differences of speech pre- 

1 See pp. 70, ff. 2 See pp. 91, ff. 



Periods of Comparison, 165 

vailing in different sections of the country, or a record 
of the peculiarities of grammar and vocabulary that 
characterize individual writers. This is especially true 
of our speech during the Early English period. In it, 
at that time, can be found the processes going on in 
full activity that destroyed the language of literature 
as seen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and, like- 
wise, the regenerating processes going on that were to 
develop the language of literature of the fourteenth 
and the following centuries. It is only between these 
clearly defined points that comparison can properly 
be made ; and, even at the beginning of the latter 
period, the language of literature is rather in process 
of formation than actually formed. Still, after the 
break up of the classical Anglo-Saxon, the fourteenth 
century is the first period in which any thing can be 
called fixed, and in which, in consequence, any com- 
parison can be made between the past and what is 
existing. In the conflicting usage of this time also, the 
Midland dialect is necessarily selected, to the exclusion 
of the other two, because from it Modern English 
strictly descended ; and of the authors who wrote in 
the Midland, with more or less diversity of usage among 
themselves, the language of Chaucer is likewise neces- 
sarily selected as representative, not only because he 
was much the greatest of all, but more especially 
because his works had more influence on the future 
development of the speech than the works of all the 
others put together. The two points, therefore, select- 
ed in representing the forms prevalent in the early 



i66 English Language. 

history of the language will be the tenth and eleventh 
centuries, — the period of the later classic West-Saxon 
dialect of Anglo-Saxon, — and the latter half of the 
fourteenth century, which witnessed the birth of Mod- 
ern English literature in the strict sense of that phrase. 
22. One further preliminary statement is necessary. 
The Anglo-Saxon alphabet consisted of twenty-four 
letters, which, with three exceptions, were borrowed 
from the Roman. Of these three one was merely a 
crossed d, and is represented by the forms D and t$ ; 
the other two were Runes. One of them is by 
German editors usually represented by v, by English 
editors by w. The other Runic letter was p ]?. Both 
8 and ]> are represented in Modern English by the 
combination th, which has two distinct sounds, — one 
seen in thou, then, tithe; the other, in thin, three, death. 
There is no distinct form for / from i; and though k, 
q, and z occur at times in the manuscripts, they did 
not represent sounds then* any more than now, which 
were not already represented by other letters, or by 
combinations of letters. The use of k for c became 
much more common after the Conquest. By the fif- 
teenth century the employment of the two characters 
representing the two sounds now conveyed by th was 
entirely abandoned. Another character, 3, was in 
common use during the Early English period, and 
represents generally the Anglo-Saxon g at the begin- 
ning of a word ; the Anglo-Saxon h at the middle or 
end of one ; as Anglo-Saxon gear, Early English tere, 
Modern English year ; Anglo-Saxon niht, Early Eng- 



Black-L etter. 1 67 

lish, ni)t, Modern English night During the middle 
ages the letters of the Roman alphabet were changed 
into a variety of forms by the ingenuity of the monastic 
scribes ; and the peculiar modification of this alphabet 
used in England is called black-letter. During the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries books were printed 
almost invariably in black-letter ; but, in the first half 
of the seventeenth century, it was generally given up 
for the clearer, original Roman characters from which 
it had been taken. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE NOUN. 

23. The following general statements may be made 
of the English noun during the Anglo-Saxon period. 
It had, — 

1. Two declensions : the vowel, or strong, and the 
consonant, or weak. The former was limited mainly 
to stems which ended originally in a (8), although 
there were remains of those in i and u, especially 
the one in u The latter was likewise mainly limited 
to the stems ending in n (10), fragments only of those 
in r and nd, and some other letters, remaining. 

2. Two numbers : the singular and the plural. 

3. Four cases : the nominative, the genitive, the 
dative, and the accusative. Many grammarians, fol- 
lowing Grimm, 1 add a fifth, the instrumental, which 
they distinguish from the dative in the singular by 
marking for the former the final e, common to both, 
as long e. There is no difference at all in the plural. 

4. Three genders : the masculine, the feminine, 

1 Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 936. Compare sect. 53. 
i63 



The Noun. 



169 



and the neuter. As will be seen by the examples, it is 
grammatical, not natural gender. 

24. The following paradigms of the masculine noun 
stdn, ' stone/ of the feminine denu, ''valley/ and the 
neuters hors, 'horse/ and scip, 'ship/ will exhibit 
the various inflections of the noun of the vowel- 
declension as commonly seen in the Anglo-Saxon. 
They all belong to the declension in a ; and the stems 
are stdna, dena, horsa, and scipa ; but this vowel has 
in the various cases often been dropped altogether, or 
been weakened, or changed into other vowels. 

I. Vowel Declension. 



Masculine. 



JVom. stanas, 
Gen. stana, 



Dat. 

Ace. 



stanum, 
stanas. 



SINGULAR. 
Feminine. 



dena, 

dena, 

denena, 

denum, 

dena. 



Neuter. 



JVom. 


stan, 


denu, 


hors, 


scip. 


Gen. 


stanes, 


dene, 


horses, 


scipes. 


Dat. 


stane, 


dene, 


horse, 


scipe. 


Ace. 


stan. 


dene. 
PLURAL. 


hors. 


scip. 




Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 

A 



hors, 

horsa, 

horsum 
hors. 



scipu. 

scipa. 

, scipum. 
scipu. 



25. Nouns originally belonging to the other two 
vowel declensions, that is, those whose stems ended 
in i or u, had, even in the Anglo-Saxon, gone over 



170 



English Language, 



wholly or partially to the a declension. There were 
no small number of feminines, however, which be- 
longed still to the i declension ; but their forms had 
become largely confused with those of the prevailing- 
declension in a. As none of them had any influence 
upon the later development of the inflection, their 
consideration is omitted here altogether. 

26. The consonant, or, more specifically, the con- 
sonant declension in n, will be exemplified by para- 
digms of the masculine noun oxa, 'ox/ of the 
feminine, tunge, ' tongue,' and of the neuter, eare, 
6 ear.' The stems are oxan, tungan, and ear an. But 
not only have the original case-endings usually dis- 
appeared ; but, in some instances, the n also has 
been dropped, or the a weakened into e. 

II. Consonant Declension. 







SINGULAR. 






Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 


Norn. 


oxa, 


tunge, 


eare. 


Gen. 


oxan, 


tungan, 


earan. 


Dat. 


oxan, 


tungan, 


earan. 


Ace. 


oxan. 


tungan. 
PLURAL. 


eare. 




Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 


Nom. 


oxan, 


tungan, 


earan. 


Gen. 


oxena, 


tungena, 


earena, 


Dat. 


oxum, 


tungum, 


earum. 


Ace. 


oxan. 


tungan. 


earan. 



27. According to some one of the paradigms found 



The Noun. 171 

in sects. 24 and 26, the immense majority of all nouns 
were declined during the Anglo-Saxon period. There 
are a few exceptions, which will be referred to later. 
As between the vowel and the consonant declensions, 
there was not much difference in the number of 
substantives belonging to each in the Anglo-Saxon ; 
and the foreign words that came in were inflected 
according to either. When ending in a consonant, 
these were usually inflected according to the vowel 
declension, and, when in a vowel, according to the 
consonant. This state of things did not perpetuate 
itself. It is evident, on even a superficial examination, 
that, of the six different inflections given above, Mod- 
ern English has retained only that found in the mas- 
culine noun of the vowel declension, — the one repre- 
sented by stdn. 

28. Still, for a century after the Norman conquest, 
these different inflections were kept up with a fair 
degree of correctness. The changes that took place, 
however, such as they were, involved, as an inevitable 
consequence, the confusion of the declensions. One 
of these was the general weakening into e of the 
vowels a, 0, and u of the endings. This manifested 
itself, indeed, long before the Conquest ; but the influ- 
ence of the literary speech was sufficient to keep it 
under restraint. As soon as that was removed, this 
general weakening of the vowels made rapid headway. 
In consequence of it, stanas, for illustration, became 
stanes, denu and dena became dene, scipi^ became 
scipe, and oxan, tungan, and edran became oxen, 



172 English Language. 

tungen, and earen. So far then, as difference of in- 
flection was denoted by difference of vowel in the 
endings, all distinction between number, case, and 
declension, had disappeared before the end of the 
twelfth century by the general use of e for the vowels 
previously employed. 

29. This was not enough of itself, however, to over- 
throw the inflectional system of the noun : another 
change came in to break down the broad distinction 
previously prevailing between the vowel and the con- 
sonant declensions. After the middle of the twelfth 
century, there was a constant tendency toward their 
assimilation, from the arbitrary gains and losses that 
went on in the use of a single letter. This was n, 
which was of special importance from its terminating 
a large number of cases in the consonant declension. 
From these, however, it came, in the twelfth century, to 
be frequently dropped. This dropping of the final n 
had likewise manifested itself, as early as the ninth 
century, in the West-Saxon dialect, though then more 
especially in the infinitive and subjunctive of the verb, 
and in the definite adjective ; but here, again, as in 
the case of the weakening of the vowels a, o, and u to 
e, the literary language had arrested the movement. 
Within a century after the Conquest, however, the 
process had again begun. Thus the genitive, dative, 
and accusative singular of oxan, tungan, and edran, of 
the consonant declension, after passing through the 
intermediate stages, oxen, tungen, and earen, became 
frequently, with the n dropped, oxe, tunge, and eare. 



The Noun. 173 

This brought them at once into complete similarity 
with many nouns of the vowel declension ; but here, 
again, another element entered, to add to the confu- 
sion. It was not uncommon, in the uncertainty that 
sprang up, for an n to be added to the dative and 
accusative singular of nouns belonging to the vowel 
declension. Thus Anglo-Saxon cyng, 'king,' is a 
masculine noun inflected in the same manner as stun. 
Its dative and accusative singular should strictly have 
been, accordingly, in late twelfth-century English, kinge 
and king respectively. As a matter of fact, they both 
sometimes appeared as kingen. So confused, indeed, 
did usage become in the proper employment of these 
two declensions, especially in the plural number, that 
it is by no means infrequent to find the same word, in 
the pages of the same author, sometimes with the 
plural es of the masculine nouns of the vowel declen- 
sion, or with the plural en of the consonant. In the 
south of England in particular, it almost seems as if 
the two terminations could be used indiscriminately ; 
and double endings of the plural were certainly com- 
mon there till the Middle English period. 

30. Nor, indeed, was this all. A third plural form 
came into use, ending in e. It was derived from the 
weakened a or u of the feminine and neuter nouns of 
the vowel declension, or from the dropping of the 11 
of the consonant declension. The same author, there- 
fore, formed, at times, his plural with three different 
endings. Thus the two texts of the "Brut" of Laya- 
mon furnish, as plurals for the Anglo-Saxon mascu- 



174 English Language. 

line noun stdn, the forms stanes, stanen, and stani' ; 
for plurals of the neuter noun hors, the forms horses, 
horsen, and horse. Such a system as this, which was 
little more than the product of ignorance and confu- 
sion, had in itself no element of perpetuity. The 
process of simplifying inflection merely as a measure 
of relief went on rapidly, in consequence, though 
much more so in the North than in the South ; and 
the simplification was usually attained by discarding 
inflection entirely. When, in the latter half of the 
fourteenth century, a new language of literature ap- 
peared, the inflection of the noun had been reduced 
to nearly its present state ; and whatever of it had 
been preserved conformed to that of the Anglo-Saxon 
masculine noun of the vowel declension, represented 
in the paradigm of stdn. As this inflection became 
the one finally established, its history requires a more 
detailed examination of the cases belonging to it and 
of the gradual adoption of the endings characteristic 
of them by nouns originally inflected differently. 

31. As regards the singular, the fact, that, in this 
number, masculines and neuters of the vowel declen- 
sion had precisely the same inflection, — as can be 
seen by comparing stdn and hors, — had, doubtless, 
much to do with the universal adoption of the endings 
belonging to them ; for these two declensions united 
embraced a very large proportion of the nouns of the 
language. In these the nominative, dative, and accu- 
sative came, in the time of Chaucer, to have the same 
form. The process generally took place after this 



The Noun. 175 

manner, in the case of words ending in a consonant. 
The dative and accusative singular early began to lose, 
and by the fourteenth century had practically lost, all 
distinction of form in the following two ways : either 
the dative sometimes dropped a final e to which it was 
entitled ; or, secondly, and far more commonly, the 
accusative assumed a final e to which it was not en- 
titled. Thus the dative and accusative came to have 
the same form, sometimes ending, sometimes not end- 
ing, in a final e. The same word, indeed, was not 
only treated in this respect differently by different 
authors, but differently at different places in the same 
manuscript. Thus, for illustration, the dative and 
accusative of the Anglo-Saxon scip would, in Early 
English, be represented in both cases, sometimes by 
ship, and sometimes by shipe. 

32. But the assimilation did not stop at this point. 
In Anglo-Saxon the form for the nominative and ac- 
cusative was alike in the case of the masculine and 
neuter nouns of the vowel declension, and it was natu- 
ral that this should continue. When, therefore, the 
accusative assumed an e which did not belong to it, 
the inevitable result was, that this e should be added 
likewise to the nominative. This would have been 
pretty certain to happen if no other influences than 
those already mentioned had been brought to bear ; 
but, as a matter of fact, very powerful ones from other 
quarters aided to hasten the accomplishment of this 
result. This was the fact that the nouns belonging to 
all the other declensions, which had begun to conform 



176 English Language, 

to the inflection of the masculine noun, had, by the 
weakening of the final vowel and the dropping of the 
final n, brought about the assimilation of the nomina- 
tive, dative, and accusative. An examination of the 
changes through which denu and oxa went will make 
this perfectly clear. Denu had in Anglo-Saxon its 
dative and accusative dene : the weakening of the 
final u to e made its nominative of precisely the same 
form, dene. So oxa, which in Early English became 
oxe, had originally for dative and accusative oxan, 
which first became oxen, and then oxe. The result 
was, that, by the beginning of the Middle English 
period, the nominative, dative, and accusative of all 
nouns, had become the same in form. Occasional 
instances do occur of a regular dative form distinct 
from that of the nominative and accusative ; but they 
were merely scattered survivals of a distinction that 
was generally disregarded. 

33. The genitive singular, however, of the mascu- 
line and neuter nouns, remained constant to the ending 
es. More than this, the termination began, from the 
commencement of the Early English period, to en- 
croach upon the genitives of the other declensions. 
These were e of the feminine nouns belonging to the 
vowel inflection, and an of all the nouns of the con- 
sonant inflection, which an also early became e by the 
dropping of the n, and the weakening of the a. For 
a long time genitives in e from these two sources con- 
tinued to be used ; and they are still found as late as 
the literature of the latter half of the fourteenth cen- 



The Noun. 177 

tury. But even then they were far from common ; and, 
in the following century, e as a genitive ending died 
out entirely, and es was everywhere employed for all 
nouns, no matter what their origin. 

34. In the plural the process of simplification was 
even more thorough. It is especially to be noticed, 
that, in this number, the one termination which was 
common to all nouns of whatever declension was the 
very first to give way. This was the um of the dative, 
which has left an occasional relic of itself in Modern 
English in the om of a few adverbs derived from 
nouns, such as whilom. It might naturally be ex- 
pected that this particular ending, from the very uni- 
versality of its use, would be the last to be given up ; 
yet its early abandonment is susceptible of an easy 
explanation. Even in the Anglo-Saxon monuments 
of the ninth century this ending um frequently ap- 
peared as on ; and the same statement is true of the 
centuries that followed. Within the hundred years 
after the Conquest, this on, from tern, not only was 
much more common than its original, but its vowel 
underwent the weakening that overtook all the vowels 
of the endings, and the termination became en. This, 
in the case of nouns of the consonant declension, 
gave it the same forms as the nominative and accusa- 
tive plural, the an of whose terminations had been 
weakened into en also. In the confusion that soon 
sprang up in the use of the two leading declensions 
by the dropping or appending of the final n, all dis- 
tinctive character was taken away from this ending as 



178 English Language. 

specially belonging to the dative plural ; and it adopted 
the form universally that was found in the nominative 
and accusative, whether it was es of the vowel declen- 
sion or the en of the consonant. 

35. The genitive plural held out longer as a distinct 
termination. At least one form of it, ene or en, lasted 
down to the end of the fourteenth century, though it 
cannot be called at any time common. This en(e) is 
derived from the regular Anglo-Saxon genitive plural 
of all the nouns of the consonant declension, though it 
was sometimes seen in the feminine nouns of the vowel. 
But, when used in the Early English period, it was not 
limited to either of these ; thus, in the phrase Christe 
kingene kynge, 1 l Christ, King of kings,' the word king, 
which is etymologically a masculine noun of the An- 
glo-Saxon vowel declension, receives this termination. 
But from the very outset, after the breaking up of 
the inflections of the original tongue, the form of the 
genitive plural showed a tendency to assimilate itself 
to those of the nominative and accusative; and, by 
the beginning of the Middle English period, this had 
become the almost universally accepted rule. 

36. The endings of those two cases, the nominative 
and accusative plural, as has already been stated, were 
usually either es, from the as of the masculine vowel 
declension, or en, from the an of the consonant declen- 
sion. Had these been kept sharply distinguished, and 
confined to the nouns to which they properly belonged, 
they would, doubtless, have both lasted to our time ; 

1 Langland's Piers Plowman. Text B, passus 17, 105 (about 137). 



The Noun. 179 

but, in the absence of any standard of authority, they 
were confused with one another, and often applied at 
different times to the same noun, at the mere fancy of 
the writer. This is particularly true of the Southern 
dialect. Language, however, is too economical in the 
use of its material to permit long the employment of 
such double forms on any extensive scale. One of 
them had to disappear, and in our tongue it was the 
plural in en. In this simplification the Northern dia- 
lect, as usual, led the way; and one of the great 
points of contrast between it and the speech of the 
South was in the scarcity of the forms in en, in the one, 
as compared with their frequency in the other. In- 
deed, to this form the Southern dialect clung with so 
much tenacity, that there is little question that a large 
number of nouns with this ending would have been 
now in constant use, if that dialect had been the parent 
of Modern English, instead of the Midland. Not only 
did the speech of the South give to the same noun two 
plurals, — one in es, and the other in en ; but it was 
as apt to give the termination en to Anglo-Saxon nouns 
of the vowel declension as to those of the consonant. 
37. The Midland dialect, as usual, followed a path 
between the two extremes, but in this respect was 
influenced much more by the example of the North in 
discarding the termination in en. By the latter half 
of the fourteenth century, the ending es had become 
established as the regular form. 1 In Chaucer, the 

1 There were orthographic variations of this, due to difference of pronun- 
ciation, such as ts, ys, us ; but they do not need to be considered here. 



i8o English Language. 

representative author of the literary speech, we find 
the plural regularly terminating in s; and the only 
relics of the original plurals in an to be found in his 
writings are asschen, ' ashes ; ' assen, ' asses ; ' been, 
' bees ; ' eyen, ' eyes ; ' fleen, ' fleas ; ' flon, ' arrows ; ' 
hosen, i hose ; ' oxen ; and ton, i toes ; ' and of these 
the modern plurals in s are also to be found employed 
by him in the case of ashes, bees, and toes. To this 
list may be added schoon, 'shoes/ which in Anglo- 
Saxon, however, belonged generally to the masculine 
vowel declension, though it had occasionally plural 
forms of the consonant. This use of s as the regular 
termination of the plural, then firmly established, was 
never after subjected to change. It ought to be added, 
that the third plural in e, already described (30), had 
died out entirely ; at least, in the confused use of final 
e, which had now become current, it was no longer 
recognizable as distinct from the neuter forms which 
are now to be described. 

38. In examining the paradigms of the neuter 
monosyllabic nouns of the vowel declension (24) one 
fact becomes apparent : this is, that such of these nouns 
as had the radical vowel long by nature, or by position 
before two consonants, did not assume u in the nomi- 
native and accusative plural. Accordingly, these cases 
had the same form as the corresponding cases of the 
singular, as can be easily seen in the inflection of 
hors. Most of these nouns came gradually, during 
the Early English period, to conform to the declension 
of the masculine nouns, and assumed the termination 



The Noun. 181 

es in the plural. Occasionally some of them assumed 
e, the weakened form of the it final of the plural of 
neuter nouns of the same declension, whose vowel was 
short ; but this was not often the case. In Chaucer's 
time the vast majority had accepted the plural in s, 
though some, such as thing, and /wrs, and folk, and year, 
were still in a state of transition, exhibiting double forms 
for the plural, — one ending in s, the other precisely 
resembling the singular. Others, again, held on to 
the ancient inflection, and apparently suffered no 
change ; for, as the nominative singular was apt, in 
such instances, to have assumed a final e, it is, of 
course, impossible to say whether e, when it occurs in 
the plural, is to be considered, in any particular 
instance, as a plural termination, or a mere inorganic 
addition to the word. 

39. Comparing, therefore, the literary language at 
the beginning of the Middle English period with that 
prevalent during the Anglo-Saxon period, it will be 
observed, that, in the centuries which intervened, the 
four cases of the noun, which in the singular had to a 
greater or less extent been distinguished by differences 
of form, had now been reduced to two. Again : in 
the Anglo-Saxon plural, the nominative and accusative 
had never had any distinction of form ; but there had 
been special forms for the genitive and dative. These 
had now all been reduced to one, and that one was, 
with a very few exceptions, the form ending in s. 
Accordingly, the paradigm of the Anglo-Saxon stdn, 



1 82 English Language, 

which had now become the general representative of 
the noun inflection, was the following : — 

Singular. Plural. 

Nom.j Dat.y and Ace. ston or stone, All Cases, stones. 

Genitive, stones. 

It is evident at a glance that this is practically the 
Modern English declension. The few slight changes 
that have since occurred are nothing, as will be seen, 
but a natural development of the tendency that had 
already brought the inflection of the noun to this 
point. The later history of the inflection will clearly 
show that the main differences between our declension 
to-day and that of the fourteenth century are all due 
to a more hurried pronunciation, and that other dif- 
ferences are apparent and not real, inasmuch as they 
are differences in the representation of the sounds, and 
not in the sounds themselves. 

40. At the beginning of the Middle English period, 
nouns which had originally ended in a vowel almost 
invariably ended in e ; and this <?, we have seen, was 
frequently assumed by nouns which originally ended 
in a consonant, and were, therefore, not strictly entitled 
to it. But, between the fourteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies, this final e, whether etymologically belonging to 
the word or not, disappeared from pronunciation. In 
the lawless and capricious spelling of the language 
that sprang up after the invention of printing, the 
retention of this final e in the orthography came to be 
a mere matter of accident. The words given in the 



The Noun. 183 

Anglo-Saxon paradigms are sufficient to serve as 
examples. Of the modern representatives of these, 
stone and horse now terminate in an e, to which they 
are not strictly entitled; tongue has retained, while 
den and ear have dropped, the e to which they are 
entitled ; and ox or oxe in modern orthography some- 
times receives it, and sometimes not. Again : ship, 
which in Early English frequently appeared as shipe, 
schipe, has gone back, as regards the ending, to its 
original form. 

41. As the dative and accusative have come to be 
precisely alike in form in both nouns and pronouns, 
the name of " objective "is generally given by modern 
grammarians to the case expressing the relations of 
direct and indirect object, formerly expressed by the 
two. The indirect relation is, to be sure, usually 
indicated by a preposition with the noun ; but it is 
not so invariably. In such a sentence as, ' He gave 
the boy a book,' boy denotes the original dative of the 
indirect, and book the original accusative of the direct 
object. 

42. In the former half of the Middle English period 
the es of the genitive singular and of the plural com- 
monly appeared as a distinct syllable, as in stones in 
the example given above. This was sometimes not 
the case, however; and s itself is often found added 
in Chaucer, instead of es, to polysyllabic words, those, 
in particular, that ended in a liquid, as, for illustration, 
naciouns. But, by the beginning of the Modern Eng- 
lish period, the final es had ceased to be pronounced 



184 English Language. 

as a separate syllable, save in those cases where the 
nature of the word still requires it to be sounded, as in 
foxes, horses. The dropping of the unpronounced e 
was a result that usually followed. In the seventeenth 
century the practice of distinguishing the genitive 
singular from the plural came into vogue by placing 
an apostrophe before the final s of the former ; but it 
was not till the eighteenth century that this became 
fully established. The still further distinction was then 
made of placing an apostrophe after the s of the geni- 
tive plural ; so that, for example, the genitive singular 
boy's, and the genitive plural boys', though spelled 
and pronounced alike, are in reading easily recognized 
as different. The genitive case has likewise come 
to be so limited in usage as to express ordinarily the 
relation of possession, and, in consequence, most 
grammarians give it the title of "possessive." This is, 
however, an unfortunate name ; for, while this is the 
relation it expresses principally, it is by no means the 
one it expresses exclusively. 

The plural form of nearly all nouns had come, 
in the fourteenth century, to be precisely the same as 
that of the genitive singular ; and the later history of 
the one differs in no respect whatever from the later 
history of the other. When the e of the genitive end- 
ing was dropped, it was dropped in the endings of the 
plural : when it was retained in the former, it was also 
retained in the latter. The account just given of the 
one, therefore, involves that of the other. 

43. This completes the history of v/hat may be 



The Noun. 185 

called the regular inflection of the noun. It now re- 
mains to consider the comparatively few words, which, 
in spite of the pressure always at work to produce uni- 
formity, have steadily resisted the tendency to go over 
to the declension which in the fourteenth century had 
become the standard one. These belong to four 
classes ; and in all of them it is the method alone of 
forming the plural that distinguishes their inflection 
from the rest. 

44. The first of these embraces the neuter mono- 
syllabic nouns already spoken of (38) as exhibiting 
no difference of form between the nominative and 
accusative singular and plural. While most of these 
had gone over to the ordinary inflection in s, a few 
held out, and to this day have remained faithful to the 
original inflection. These are deer (A. S. deor), sheep 
(A. S. seedp), swine (A. S. swiri) ; and to these may, 
perhaps, be added neat (A. S. neat) , though this is 
usually a collective noun. Thing, during the Middle 
English period, conformed to the regular declension, as 
did several others, though they often showed a disposi- 
tion to exhibit double forms for the plural, — one with, 
and one without, s. But the tendency has always been 
toward the exclusive adoption of the regular inflection 
by these words. Yet, even in the Early English period, 
there had come into the language a number of words 
from Romance sources, which followed in their declen- 
sion the native words that underwent no change in the 
plural ; and, though most of these have now become 
regular, there are still several, both from foreign and 



1 86 English Language, 

from native sources, that continue to show two forms 
for the plural. They usually denote number, measure, 
weight, or length of time ; and with some of them, 
such as brace, and sail m the sense of ' vessel/ as 'fifty 
sail/ the regular form in s is unusual. In general, 
however, it may be said that the modern language 
shows an increasing preference for the plural in s. 
But there continue to be many words, such as pair 
and pairs, score and scores, couple and couples, in 
which the frequency of the form either with or without 
s varies with individual usage. 

45. The second class includes a few nouns, which, 
in the English of the Anglo-Saxon period, invariably 
underwent vowel-modification (17) in the nominative 
and accusative plural, and have in some cases trans- 
mitted these modified forms to the English of our day. 
This was originally due, as has been explained, to the 
influence of a following vowel ; and, while the vowel 
once following has been dropped, the vowel-modifica- 
tion wrought by it remains. In the instances about 
to be cited, it was an i that has disappeared, which 
brought about the variation of 6 to e, of 11 to y, of u 
to y, and of a to e. In the Anglo-Saxon their varia- 
tions were limited to the words of the following list, in 
which the nominative singular and plural are placed 
side by side : — 



Singular. 




Plural. 


Singular. 




Plural. 


boc, 


book, 


bee. 


gos, 


goose, 


ges. 


broc, 


breeches, 


brec. 


t65, 


tooth, 


teff. 


fot, 


foot, 


fet. 


cu, 


cow, 


cy. 



The Noun. 187 

Singular. Plural. Singular. Plural. 

lus, louse, lys. burh, borough, byrh. 

mus, mouse, mys. turf, turf, tyrf. 

man, man, men. 

That this modification of the vowel was not in itself 
a sign of the plural is at once made clear by the fact, 
that, in Anglo-Saxon, the dative singular had in these 
words precisely the same form as the nominative 
plural. 

46. Of these nouns, book, borough, and turf had 
gone over, by the end of the fourteenth century, to the 
regular inflection of the plural in s. In the Modern 
English breeches, however, the original vowel 6 of the 
singular has been abandoned ; and along with the ex- 
clusive use of the word in the plural, with its regular 
plural sign, the modified vowel e of the original plural 
has been retained. Accordingly, it is from brcc, and 
not from broc, that the present word has been directly 
derived. The transition took place during the Early 
English period. The etymological plural of cu was 
retained in the speech of the North, and is still found 
in the kye of the Scotch dialect. But another plural 
form, kine, had come in before the end of the four- 
teenth century, and became established in the lan- 
guage of literature. Its origin will be discussed in 
the remarks upon the third class (48). This, in turn, 
though it has never died out, was obliged, during the 
Modern English period, to give way in common use to 
the regular form cows. The remaining six, foot, goose, 
tooth, louse, mouse, and man, have remained un- 



1 88 English Language. 

changed, in respect to vowel-modification, during all 
the periods in the history of the language, though 
sporadic instances occur, in which the regular ending 
s appears, particularly in the case of foot, which has 
shown at times, especially in the Early English period, a 
plural in s, with the vowel unmodified. 

47. In the third class are embraced the few nouns 
which still exhibit the ending in n, once common to 
half the substantives of the language. It has already 
been stated, that, in the long conflict between the 
vowel and the consonant declensions, the former had 
triumphed; and of the ten words belonging to the 
latter, that are used by Chaucer (37), three are like- 
wise to be found with plurals in s, clearly showing that 
the transition to the regular form was going on. It 
continued to go on with unabated vigor after his death ; 
and, by the beginning of the Modern English period, 
the only genuine historical plural in n that was univer- 
sally used in prose and poetry was oxen, for, while 
eyen and shoon continued to be employed, they were 
looked upon, then as now, merely as poetic forms. 
Of the vast number of nouns originally belonging to 
the consonant declension, ox is the solitary survival in 
Modern English, and even that, in the singular number, 
conforms to the vowel declension. It is to be added 
that hoseii, which Chaucer used, dropped its n, but did 
not add an s. 

48. At the same time, during this long conflict, the 
consonant declension did not fail to add some words 
to its numbers. In fact, in the Southern dialects, many 



The Noun. 



189 



nouns, as we have seen, belonging to the vowel de- 
clension, formed their plural in n. Still the literary 
language in the latter half of the fourteenth century 
almost entirely discarded this termination ; though, as 
might be expected, there is a slight difference of usage 
in the writings of different authors. Taking Chaucer 
as the representative of this period, the following state- 
ment can be made in regard to these forms. There 
are six words, as employed by him, which still continue 
to show in the plural a final n derived from the 
plural of the consonant declension. Three of them — 
brother, sister, and daughter — belong strictly to nei- 
ther of the two leading Anglo-Saxon declensions, but 
to a group called r-stems, of which there were a few 
survivals in the Teutonic tongues. The other three, 
it will be noticed, exhibit irregularities. The Anglo- 
Saxon form, the Early English intermediate forms, and 
the Middle English form of the plural, are here given 
side by side ; though there are numerous orthographic 
variations of the two latter, which will not be noticed 
here. 



Anglo-Saxon. 


Early English. 


Middle English 


broSru, 


brothre, ) 
brethre, J 


bretheren. 


dohtru, 


dohtere, 


doughtren. 


sweostru, 


sustre, 


sustren. 


cildru, 


childre, 


children. 


fa, hostile. 


fo, 


fon. 


cy, 


kye, 


kyn. 



190 English Language, 

Of these words, children is the only one that has 
clung to the plural in n exclusively. Kine, while still 
retained, has given way, in common use, to the regular 
form, cows ; and in the sixteenth century brothers 
was developed alongside of brethren, and in the seven- 
teenth century became the form generally employed. 
The language still retains* the two plurals, but makes a 
slight distinction, ordinarily, in their meaning. The e 
of bretlwen is perhaps an intrusion from the dative 
singular, in which the vowel 6 was modified into e, just 
as fot became, in that case, fit The other words, 
daughter, sister, and likewise foe, which was originally 
an adjective, gave up the n before the beginning of 
the Modern English period, and assumed s in its 
place. 

49. There now remains the fourth class to be con- 
sidered, — that of the foreign nouns that have been 
imperfectly Anglicized, and still retain, in consequence, 
the plural they had in the tongue from which they 
were taken. Naturally the endings are very diverse. 
Most of these words have been introduced during the 
Modern English period ; many of them are terms 
connected with the natural or physical sciences. A 
large number of them are therefore technical in their 
character ; and of all of them, it is true, that, at first, 
they are only employed by the educated. So long as 
their use was limited to this class, they underwent no 
change. The original plural, no matter what might be 
its ending, was rigidly retained. But no sooner did 
they cease to be purely technical than they were at 



The Noun. 191 

once affected by the tendency of the language to strive 
after uniformity. With many of them, in consequence, 
the English plural in s either superseded the foreign 
plural altogether, or became established alongside of 
it. As illustration of the former, omens has driven out 
the original plural omina, once in use, and dogmas has 
almost entirely taken the place of dogmata ; while, on 
the other hand, formulae and formulas may be said 
to be equally common, though, in technical works, the 
former is perhaps preferred. There is, indeed, little 
question that all these words that come to be gen- 
erally employed would go over to the regular form, 
and be fully Anglicized, were it not for the influence 
of the literary language, which in many cases makes 
the foreign plural perfectly familiar to all. The plural 
genera, from genus, 'for example, is so firmly established, 
that genuses, from present appearances, can have no 
hope of ever being adopted. The same statement is 
also true of the Latin nouns in is whose plural ends in 
es, such as ellipsis, ellipses, hypothesis, hypotheses, 
oasis, oases, and others ; though here the perpetuation 
of the original form has been materially aided by the 
difficulty of pronouncing what would be the Anglicized 
form. 

50. It is natural, however, that, in many of these 
nouns, double forms should be produced, and indeed 
continue to increase as the words pass more and more 
from technical into common usage. The uneducated, 
or rather those not specially educated, cannot be 
expected to know the foreign plurals ; and the substi- 



192 English Language. 

tution of the English plural sign s gets rid, by an easy 
process, of all doubts and difficulties. Consequently 
we have apparatus and apparatuses, radii and radi- 
uses, phenomena and phenojnenons, vortices and vor- 
texes, virtuosi and virtuosos, and numerous other 
double forms. In some cases there is a difference of 
meaning between these two plurals, as, for instance, 
between genii and geniuses, indices and indexes. In 
this respect the word stamen reverses the usual order 
of things ; for while, in science, the Anglicized plural 
stame?is is the form employed, it is the foreign plural 
stamina that is heard in the language of common life. 
But this is doubtless due to the fact that men have 
largely forgotten that the latter form has any singular 
connected with it. 

51. For it is clear that the use of foreign plurals is 
certain, in some cases, to result in confusion. The 
great majority of men who speak English cannot be 
expected to be familiar with any speech but their own ; 
and when endings are introduced of whose force they 
are ignorant, it is impossible that they should in every 
instance use them with exact propriety. Such termina- 
tions are in the nature of exceptions to a general rule, 
and the exceptions are but few which men will take the 
trouble to learn. It is too much to ask of those whose 
acquaintance with language is limited only to their own, 
or even to the modern tongues, to feel that stamina 
and effluvia and errata are real plurals : the fact, if 
known to them at all, must be learned in each particu- 
lar case. Under such circumstances, mistakes in usage 



The Noun. 193 

are almost sure to arise. Perhaps no more striking 
illustration of this can be found than in the history of 
the two words cherub and seraph. Their respective 
plurals in the Hebrew, from which they were borrowed, 
were cherubim and seraphim ; and these forms natu- 
rally were the ones first used for that number. But 
the language also developed the regular English form, 
cherubs and seraphs, giving the words, as in several 
other instances, two plurals. At this point, confusion 
came in. Cherubim and seraphim were not felt to be 
plurals, and the result was, that they were treated as 
singulars ; and, being looked upon as singulars, they 
themselves, though really plurals, received the English 
plural sign s in addition. Consequently cherubims 
and seraphims came into wide use ; and this corrup- 
tion was thoroughly established in the language before 
the Middle English period. How firmly fixed it had 
become is evident from the fact that these are the 
forms generally, if not invariably, employed by the 
translators of the English Bible, though they were, of 
course, acquainted with the Hebrew. 

52. Of these four classes of nouns, the plural of 
which varies from the regular plural, this only remains' 
to be said : whenever the genitive is employed, they 
assume an s, after the manner of the ordinary inflec- 
tion. This, in a few instances, renders the genitive 
plural different from the nominative plural. In the 
case of the nouns which undergo vowel-modification, 
that variation causes necessarily the genitive plural to 
differ in form from the genitive singular. These com- 



194 English Language. 

plete all the exceptions to the regular inflection that 
Modern English presents outside of purely euphonic 
ones, such as the dropping of the sound of s, and 
sometimes of its sign, in the genitive of words which 
themselves terminate in the sound of s, as may be 
illustrated by such phrases as "for conscience* sake/* 
and the like. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ADJECTIVE. 

53. The English noun, in the course of its history, 
has been largely stripped of its inflections ; but its 
losses bear little proportion to those of the adjective. 
To a certain extent, the same influences operated upon 
both. Together they underwent the changes that were 
brought about by the weakening of the vowels a, 0, 
and u to e, and the dropping of the final n ; and the 
results which followed in the one case took place like- 
wise in the other, and do not need to be repeated. 
But the losses of the adjective at even an early period 
were far more extensive than those of the noun, as the 
confusion of the declensions was also much greater. 
With the former part of speech, inflection has now 
entirely disappeared. One unchanged form has taken 
the place of the manifold ones originally used to 
express, not merely the distinction of gender, number, 
and case, but also of declension. 

54. During the Anglo-Saxon period the adjective 

195 



196 English Language. 

was distinguished by the possession of the following 
characteristics : — 

1. Two declensions. 

2. Forms differing, to a great extent, for the three 
genders, — the masculine, the feminine, and the 
neuter. 

3. Two numbers, the singular and the plural, with 
marked differences of forms for each. 

4. Four cases, — the nominative, genitive, dative, 
and accusative. To these most grammarians add a 
fifth, the instrumental, which, in the paradigms found 
below, is put down as a secondary form of the dative, 
corresponding to the dative of the masculine and 
neuter nouns of the vowel declension of the noun. 
Those who regard these forms as belonging to the 
instrumental make the final e long e, as in the simi- 
lar case of the noun (23). 

Rich as the adjective evidently was in inflection 
during the Anglo-Saxon period, it is evident that even 
then it had suffered losses. The vowels a, i, and u, 
may all have been added to the stem of the adjective 
as to that of the noun (8) in the primitive Teutonic ; 
but even in the earliest of the Teutonic languages, 
the Gothic, the stems in i had disappeared, if they 
ever existed. Steins in u were still to be found in 
that tongue ; but in the Anglo-Saxon they had given 
way entirely to stems in a, which had become univer- 
sal. 

55. The Teutonic adjective differs from the adjec- 
tive of most of the other languages belonging to the 



The Adjective. 197 

Indo-European family in two respects. The first is, 
that every adjective is declined in two different ways ; 
and the second is, that one of these declensions is 
distinct from that of the noun. This latter declension 
is, according to a view widely adopted, based upon 
the addition to the adjective stem of a demon- 
strative pronoun which has fully united with it. This 
pronoun does not exist in any of the Teutonic tongues, 
save as it is thought to be detected in the terminations 
of the adjective, but is deemed to be the Sanskrit 
relative yas, yd, yad, which, in the primitive Teutonic, 
had assumed the force of a demonstrative, and been 
appended to the adjective (with whose form it finally 
melted), instead of standing before it. One name of 
the declension in which this is seen is, therefore, the 
" pronominal. " 

56. The other declension is also called sometimes 
the " nominal " or noun declension, because its forms 
correspond with those found in the corresponding 
masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns of the conso- 
nant declension in n of the noun. Besides these, the 
terms "strong" and "weak" are applied to the two 
inflections ; but there are, in addition, other names, 
derived from the use of the adjective, which will be 
the ones employed here. The adjective was usually 
declined according to the consonant or weak declen- 
sion, when the substantive which it qualified was made 
definite, by connecting with the qualifying adjective 
the definite article, or a demonstrative or possessive 
pronoun ; but, when the adjective was simply used 



198 



English Language. 



alone, the substantive was, as a consequence, indefinite ; 
and the adjective was inflected, in such cases, according 
to the pronominal or strong declension. Hence have 
arisen the terms " definite " and " indefinite " as applied 
to the inflection of the adjective. This peculiar, and it 
must be said useless, characteristic of the primitive 
Teutonic, has wholly disappeared in English, but still 
survives in Modern German. The following para- 
digms of the adjective blind, ' blind,' inflected both 
ways, will show the forms of the language as they are 
generally found in the writings of the tenth and 
eleventh centuries. But during the Anglo-Saxon peri- 
od itself there was a good deal of sloughing off of the 
terminations of the adjective in the indefinite declen- 
sion, thereby reducing them to the same form. Thus 
the nominative and accusative plural would be ordina- 
rily in the language of the eighth century, blinde, blinda, 
blindu, for the masculine, feminine, and neuter respec- 
tively, instead of the one form here given, blinde ; and 
survivals of the earlier usage constantly make their 
appearance in the later Anglo-Saxon. 

57. Indefinite (Pronominal or Strong) De- 
clension. 

SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



Masculine. 
Nom, blind, 
Gen. blindes, 

Dat. J 

Ace, blindne 



blindum, [ 
blinde, S 



Feminine. 

blind, 

blindre, 

blindre, 

blinde. 



Neuter. 

blind, 

blindes, 
( blindum, ) 
( blinde, ) 

blind. 



All Genders, 
blinde, 
blindra, 

blindum, 

blinde. 



The Adjective. 



199 



58. Definite (Nominal or Weak) Declen 



sion, 







SINGULAR. 




PLURAL. 




Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 


All Genders. 


Nom. 


blinda, 


blinde, 


blinde, 


blindan, 


Gen. 


blindan, 


blindan, 


blindan, 


blindena, 


Dat. 


blindan, 


blindan, 


blindan, 


blindum, 


Ace. 


blindan. 


blindan. 


blinde. 


blindan. 



59. As an illustration of the use of these declensions, 
' a blind man ' would be, in Anglo-Saxon, blind man ; 
' of a blind man ' would be blindes mannes ; whereas, 
making the substantive definite by connecting it with 
the demon#trative pronoun, ' that blind man ' would 
be se blinda man ; and ' of that blind man ' would be 
\ces blindan mannes. 

60. A glance at these paradigms is sufficient to show 
how rich in inflection the English adjective was in the 
Anglo-Saxon of the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
though even then it had lost many of the endings 
which two centuries before had belonged to it. Down 
to the twelfth century this fulness of inflection was 
retained ; but the same confusion that overtook the 
noun during the centuries following the Conquest 
befell the adjective also. The two declensions of the 
adjective are still retained to this day, as has been 
said, in Modern High German. In English this varia- 
tion of inflection was one of the first things to go. 
By the end of the second century after the Conquest 
the distinction between the definite and the indefinite 
adjective had not only everywhere broken down, in 



200 English Language. 

some places it had disappeared entirely ; but the con- 
fusion that sprang up in consequence did not result 
in giving exclusive ascendency to any one particular 
inflection, as in the case of the noun : it had rather 
the effect of causing the terminations to be abandoned 
altogether. In a general way, it may be said, that, in the 
fourteenth century, the plural of monosyllabic adjectives 
ended in e, and was distinguished from the singular by 
that termination, and that this was the most that then 
remained of the once extensive inflection of this part 
of speech. So, for illustration, blind would be used for 
all cases of the singular, blinde, for all cases of the 
plural. But necessarily this distinction could not apply 
to adjectives which ended in e : it had even then ceased 
to apply to adjectives of more than one syllable. It 
was, moreover, further weakened by the fact that many 
adjectives which originally ended in a consonant had, 
like the noun, assumed a final e to which they were 
not entitled ; and, in consequence, the ending of the 
singular was the same as that of the plural. By the 
end of the Middle English period the distinction be- 
tween the two numbers was utterly swept away, and 
the unchanged radical form of the adjective was, as 
now, the only one employed. Remains of the defi- 
nite declension also existed in the fourteenth century, 
especially in the assumption of the final e by adjec- 
tives preceded by the definite article and demonstra- 
tive pronoun. Thus, ' the blind man ' would be 
generally written and pronounced the blinde man. 
But before the beginning of the Modern English 



The Adjective. 201 

period all traces of adjective inflection of any kind 
whatever had disappeared completely. A relic of the 
definite declension, perhaps the only one, is still seen 
in the form olden (A. S., ealdan) in phrases such as 
' the olden time ; ' but in such an expression olden 
is, to modern feeling, simply a correlative form of the 
adjective old, and not an oblique case of it, as ori- 
ginally it was. 

61. The history of the participle declension does 
not differ from that of the adjective. It also was 
inflected both ways in Anglo-Saxon, and shared through- 
out in all the losses suffered by the latter. 

Comparison. 

62. Comparison, being really a matter of derivation, 
and not of inflection, does not strictly find a place in 
a history of the latter. It is convenient, however, to 
follow the usual method, and so treat it. 

In all of the Indo-European tongues certain suffixes 
were added to the radical of the adjective to form 
the comparative : to form the superlative, a sec- 
ondary suffix was added, usually to the suffix of the 
comparative. These suffixes underwent much change 
of form in the various languages ; but their general 
resemblance and common descent are apparent in all. 

The suffixes almost universally employed in the 
Teutonic to form the comparative were is and 6s : to 
these another suffix, ta, was added to form the super- 
lative. But in every one of the Teutonic tongues, 
save the Gothic, the s of the comparative had suffered 



202 English Language. 

rhotacism (12), as it did usually in Latin (cf. alt-us, 
alt-ior, alt-ius) ; and the forms employed were, in con- 
sequence, ir and dr. In the superlative, however, the 
change of s to r did not take place ; and the original 
forms of the suffixes were therefore ista and osta. 

63. In Anglo-Saxon, moreover, the i or 6 of the 
suffix was dropped in the comparative. In many 
words, however, the vowel-modification produced by 
the i (19) continued to remain, and, in some in- 
stances, transmitted the modified form to a later 
period. Thus lang, 'long/ Strang, ' strong/ under 
the influence of the vowel which had come to be 
dropped, became lengra (for lengira) and strengra 
(for strengira.) In a similar manner, eald or aid, 
'old/ became in the comparative either yldra or eldra. 
But, as the vowels i and 6 of the suffixes were 
dropped, the simple letter r was consequently all that 
was added to form the comparative ; and, as adjec- 
tives in this degree were invariably inflected according 
to the definite declension, the termination of the 
nominative was therefore always ra and re. In the 
superlative, the final a of both suffixes was dropped, 
and the i of the ending ist was usually weakened into e. 
The comparison of the adjective in the Anglo-Saxon 
period may, in consequence, be fully seen in the fol- 
lowing examples : — 



blind, 


blind, 


blind-r-a, 


blind-ost. 


br£d, 


broad, 


brad-r-a, 


brad-ost. 


Strang, 


strong, 


streng-r-a, 


streng-est. 


eald, 


old, 


yld-r-a, 


yld-est. 



The Adjective. 203 

64. In the Early English period the i and the S, 
which had been dropped in the Anglo-Saxon, were 
resumed in the comparative ; but there sprang up con- 
fusion in the use of the two vowels, and the i, it is to 
be added, was invariably weakened into e. The same 
adjective would appear in the comparative and super- 
lative degree, sometimes with the suffixes ore, ost, 
sometimes with ere, est A representative comparison 
of the adjective during this transition period would be 
the following : — 

( blind-ere, blind-est (e). 

\ blind-ore, blind-ost (e). 

The forms with the vowel e became steadily pre- 
dominant, and by the fourteenth century were almost 
invariably employed. The final e of the comparative 
was also at that time frequently dropped in spelling, 
as it had been in pronunciation \ and by the begin- 
ning of the Modern English period it had disappeared 
altogether, leaving the comparison precisely in the sit- 
uation in which it is at present. 

65. The modification of the vowel seen in Strang, 
'strong/ strengra, 6 stronger,' lang, 'long,' lengra, 
6 longer,' and other words, lasted down to the four- 
teenth century, and later ; but in the Middle English 
period it disappeared from the language entirely, with 
the single exception of old, which still clings to elder 
and eldest, the representatives of the original compari- 
son, although it has developed, and commonly uses, the 
more strictly regular forms, older and oldest. 

66. In the "Ancren Riwle," a work written about 



204 English Language. 

1 2 20, the first recorded instance of a comparison by 
means of adverbs is found in the phrase the meste 
dredfiil. This comparison by means of the adverbs 
more and most is rare in the thirteenth century ; but 
in the fourteenth it made rapid progress. Since that 
time it has steadily increased in use, flourishing side 
by side with the suffixes in er and est. In the case of 
polysyllabic adjectives this method of comparison is 
now much the more common one, few late English 
writers employing forms like Bacon's honorablest, 
Shakspeare's sovereignest, or Milton's virtuousest, ex- 
quisitest y excellentest. But the tendency to give up 
the employment of such formations is not due to their 
being improper, but to their being difficult to pro- 
nounce. 

67. The existence of two methods of comparison 
enabled English to gratify that disposition to make 
use of double comparison to which all the Teutonic 
tongues have manifested an inclination. This was 
introduced in the fourteenth century, and for the next 
three centuries was largely employed. In the latter 
part of the sixteenth century, and the beginning of 
the seventeenth, when it was by many regarded as an 
elegancy of style, it was perhaps the most prevalent. 
Expressions like 'the most unkindest cut of all* 
(" Julius Caesar," act hi. scene 2), 'the most straitesl 
sect of our religion' (Acts xxvi. 5), 'my most dearest 
nephew' (Sir Thomas More's "Edward V."), are to 
be found scattered through the pages of numerous 
writers of the Elizabethan age, and earlier. By Ben 



The Adjective. 205 

Jonson this is spoken of as " a certain kind of English 
Atticism, or eloquent phrase of speech, imitating the 
manner of the most ancientest and finest Grecians, 
who, for more emphasis and vehemency's sake, used 
so to speak." This usage died out in the seventeenth 
century, but has been occasionally employed by Eng- 
lish poets of the present time. The assertion, how- 
ever, so frequently made, that adjectives expressing 
the highest possible degree of a quality, like chief, 
supreme, perfect, are not subject to comparison, 
whether logically correct or not, is not merely utterly 
at variance with the usage of the best writers of all 
periods of English, but with that of the best writers 
of both ancient and modern cultivated tongues. 

68. The English irregular comparison seen in good, 
bad, much, and little, goes back to the earliest times, 
and indeed is common to all the Teutonic languages. 
The irregularity consists in the fact that the compara- 
tive and superlative are derived from a stem different 
from that of the positive. Moreover, in worse (A. S. 
wyr-sd) and less (A. S. Ices-sa) the change of s to r (62) 
did not take place. Lesser is a double comparative, 
as is also worser, — a form common in the Eliza- 
bethan period, but now rarely employed. There has 
frequently been a disposition shown to compare these 
adjectives regularly. Gooder and goodest, b adder and 
baddest, are occasionally to be met with in our litera- 
ture, though they cannot be called common ; and littler 
and littlest are forms frequently found in the English 
dialects, and sometimes make their appearance in the 
literary speech. 



206 English Language. 

69. There are relics of still other suffixes of compari 
son to be found in Modern English ; as, for instance, 
that of ma, seen in such words as foremost and 
utmost. In Anglo-Saxon, for-ma meant ' foremost/ 
and ilte-ma meant ' utmost ; ' but even then the super- 
lative force of the suffix ma began to be felt as weak, 
and est was added, thereby forming the strengthened 
double superlatives fyrmest and litmest. This double 
superlative suffix mest appears in Modern English as 
most in several words besides these ; such as, mid- 
most, southmost, the having been substituted for e 
as a consequence of mest being confounded with the 
adverb most, used to express the superlative. 






______ 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE PRONOUN. 

70. The pronoun is usually divided into four classes, 
— the personal, the demonstrative, the interrogative, 
and the relative ; to these is added frequently a fifth 
class, called the indefinite, comprehending a number 
of words which occupy a position half way between 
the noun and adjective, and sometimes partake of the 
nature of both. As they received the inflection of 
one of these two parts of speech, their later history is 
involved in that of the noun and adjective, and does 
not demand attention here. It is different with the 
words belonging to the four other classes. These 
have a history of a somewhat exceptional character. 
Ordinarily the discussion of the pronoun begins with 
the personal ; but as, in the later development of the 
English language, some of the forms of the demonstra- 
tive have gone over to the personal, it is expedient in 
this case to begin with the former. 



207 



208 English Language. 

The Demonstrative Pronouns. 

71. The only two genuine demonstratives in Mod- 
ern English are that and this with their respective 
plurals. But in the earliest period of the language 
they had a fulness of inflection of which there has 
been but little survival in the present tongue. Each 
of them will require separate consideration. 

72. The following is the inflection in Anglo-Saxon 
of the demonstrative represented in Modern English 
by that : — 







SINGULAR. 




PLURAL. 




Masc. 


Fem. 


Neut. 


All Genders. 


Norn. 


se, 


seo, 


paet, 


-1 a 

fa. 


Gen. 


fees, 


faere, 


paes, 


para. ] 
f aera. } 


Dat. 


fam, 


fabre, 


pam, 


fam. "i 
p aem. j 


Ace. 


pone. 


fa. 


pset, 


1 a 
fa. 


Inst. 






tf> V e. 





Besides varying forms of the other cases not given 
here, the nominative masculine and feminine singular 
sometimes presented the forms \e and \eo for se and 
seo ; and the former were apparently the older of the 
two. The transition of the nominative singular femi- 
nine, and of the whole plural, into the pronoun of the 
third person, will be discussed farther on (82). 

73. In the twelfth century, the inflection began to 
fall away ; but, as usual, there was, in this respect, the 



The Pronoun. 209 

widest difference between various sections of the 
country. By the beginning of the Middle English 
period, the forms were reduced to that for the singu- 
lar, which, as is evident, was derived from the neuter 
nominative and accusative. The plural was repre- 
sented by tho, the Anglo-Saxon \d. All the other 
forms had either disappeared, or been put to other 
uses. Nor was tho itself for the plural common. In 
Middle English the plural sign s was added to this 
form, making it thos, or, as it came usually to be 
spelled, those ; and this has since remained the regu- 
lar plural. By many, however, those is derived from 
the plural of the pronoun \es (76). The Northern 
dialect of the thirteenth century shows a plural thas, 
meaning ' those ;' but in this, as in so many other 
cases, that dialect probably preceded the Midland in 
adding an s to the original form. 

74. The instrumental \e or \>y, however, continued 
to remain in use with the comparative of the adjec- 
tive, and in the form the it is still constantly em- 
ployed in Modern English, as it in fact has been dur- 
ing every period in the history of the tongue. In 
such phrases as " the more, the better," the is often 
falsely explained as an article ; whereas it, in fact, is 
nothing more than a relic of the lost instrumental case 
of the demonstrative pronoun. 

75. But the definite article does owe its origin, to 
this demonstrative. In the Anglo-Saxon period this 
use of it is frequently exemplified, though many cases 
occur when it is hard to decide whether the word is 



210 English Language, 

really the article or the pronoun. In the twelfth cen- 
tury the form se died out, and the correlative form, \e, 
took its place ; and, from that time on, the and that 
became the general representatives of the article, 
being, in fact, used indifferently with nouns of any 
gender. As such they both remained down to the 
fifteenth century ; though, in the Early English of the 
South, forms derived from the other cases were occa- 
sionally to be found. Especially is this true of \>e?i or 
then, from the accusative ]>one, as may be seen by the 
following example : — 

Then wey he nom to Londone, he and alle his. 1 
The and that, however, were the usual articles for 
several centuries. But the use of the latter as a de- 
monstrative, as a relative, and also as a conjunction, 
had insensibly the tendency to cause the to be preferred 
as the article, not only for the sake of greater definite- 
ness, but to relieve the other word from being too much 
over- worked. So, during the Middle English, that 
ceased to be used any longer as an article. Certain 
phrases in which it had once been so employed con- 
tinued, however, to survive long after any such general 
employment of it had been abandoned. This is true, 
especially of the phrases that oon, and that other, 
meaning 'the one,' and 'the other.' In these the 
final / of the that was often transferred to the following 
word, giving us the tone and the tother, — expressions 
which are not uncommon in Elizabethan English, and, 

1 He took the way to London, he and all his (Robert of Gloucester, vol. L 
p. 364). 



The Pronoun, 211 

indeed, are occasionally met with now. In fact, the 
word tother is often used alone, and, when so used, 
is generally written with an apostrophe, f other, as if 
the /were a contraction of the, instead of being in its 
origin the final letter of that. 

76. The following is the paradigm of the Anglo- 
Saxon demonstrative pronoun whose representative in 
modern English is this : — 

SINGULAR. PLURAL. 

Masc. Fern. Neut. All Genders. 

Nom. pes, peos, pis, pas. 

Gen. pises, pisse, pises, pissa. 

Dat. pisum, pisse, pisum, pisum. 

Ace. pisne. pas. pis, pas. 



peos, 1 
pys. ) 



Inst. w 

77. Even less of this word has survived than of the 
foregoing. It is the neuter nominative and accusative 
that has alone remained of the singular ; and the drop- 
ping of the other forms not only took place early, but 
had been completed by the close of the thirteenth 
century, though sporadic examples of some of them 
can be found later. In the fourteenth century, only 
the form this is found in the singular : the plural is 
represented by this, thise, or these, derived from the 
singular form. It was the last that gradually sup- 
planted the two others, and became in Middle English 
the regular plural, which it has ever since remained. 
The form this, however, continued to survive, and, as 



212 English Language. 

a plural, is not uncommon in Elizabethan English ; as, 
for illustration, " Meaning to aid thee in /A/j Turkish 
arms " (Marlowe's Tamburlaine, part ii. act i. sc. 3. 
8vo of 1592) ; "What needs this long suggestions - in 
this cause ? " (Greene's James IV., act iii. sc. 3) ; 
" This high promotions " {Ibid., act i. sc. 2) ; " In this 
semicircles" (Battle of Alcazar, act i. sc. 1). But it 
is far more common in certain expressions such as 
"this twenty weeks," "this hundred pounds," which 
are still in use, and are now ordinarily explained on 
syntactical grounds, which do not require this to be 
regarded as a plural. 

78. Besides this, there were in Anglo-Saxon certain 
other words which are commonly reckoned as demon- 
strative pronouns. They are compounds of He, ' like : ' 
one of them is ylc, ' same,' which lasted down to the 
fifteenth century in the literary language as ilk, and 
then died out of common use ; but it was preserved 
in the speech of the North, and is made somewhat 
familiar to us by its frequent occurrence in the poetry 
written in the Scotch dialect. Another of these demon- 
stratives was \ylc, ' that same,' ' that,' which in Early 
English usually appeared as thilke, and in Middle 
English died out entirely. Another compound, \ysllc, 
1 such,' was far from common even in Anglo-Saxon, 
and disappeared early; but such was not the case 
with swile, which, after passing through many inter- 
mediate forms of spelling, varying with pronunciation, 
among which are swilche, swulche, sulche, swiche, 
siche, and soche, finally settled upon one of them, 



The Pronoun. 213 

suche, and has been retained in Modern English in 
the form such. Of these four, ylc followed the defi- 
nite adjective-declension in Anglo-Saxon ; the other 
three, the indefinite ; and they all naturally shared in 
the fate that overtook these inflections. Besides these, 
same and yon are often reckoned as demonstratives in 
Modern English \ but in the earliest period of the 
language they were used only as adverbs, and their 
employment as pronouns made its first appearance in 
the dialect of the North. 

The Personal Pronouns. 

79. The following are the forms of the pronouns of 
the first, second, and third persons, as found in Anglo- 
Saxon. The third person, which in its origin was a 
demonstrative, is the only one that distinguishes gen- 
der, and that in the singular alone. 







FIRST PERSON. 






Singular. 


Dual. 


Plural. 


Nom. 


ic, 


wit, 


we, 


Gen. 


min, 


uncer, 


user, 


Dat. 


me, 


unc, 


us, 


Ace. 


( mec, 
( me. 


uncit, 
unc. 

SECOND PERSON. 


usic, 
us. 




Singular. 


Dual. 


Plural. 


Norn. 


fu, 


git, 


ge, 


Gen. 


l'in, 


incer, 


eower, 


Dat. 


J>e, 


inc, 


eow, 


A/-/- 


( l :ec , 


incit, 


eowic, 


/ice. 


1-e. 


inc. 


eow. 



214 English Language. 







THIRD PERSON. 








SINGULAR. 




PLURAL. 




Masculine. 


Feminine. 


Neuter. 


All genders. 


Norn. 


he, 


heo, 


hit, 


hi, 


Gen. 


his, 


hire, 


his, 


hira, 


Dat. 


him, 


hire, 


him, 


him, 


Ace. 


hine. 


( heo. } 


hit. 


hi. 



80. Comparing these forms with those found in 
Modern English, it is evident at once that the personal 
pronouns have retained more of the original inflection 
than either the noun or the adjective. It is they and 
the interrogative who that alone continue to make a 
distinction in form between the nominative and objec- 
tive cases. Moreover, whatever losses they suffered, 
they suffered them before the Middle English period ; 
and certain general statements can be made in regard 
to their forms as seen in Anglo-Saxon, and as con- 
trasted with those exhibited by them even in Middle 
English. 

81. The most noticeable thing is the fact, that in 
this, the earliest form of the language, the pronouns 
of the first and second persons still continued to re- 
tained the dual number. It had died out of the noun, 
the adjective, and the verb ; but in Anglo- Saxon, as 
in the other early Teutonic tongues, it still survived in 
these two pronouns. But in it, as likewise in the others, 
it showed signs of giving way. Even in the ninth 
and tenth centuries it was not unusual to strengthen 



The Pronoun. 215 

the dual forms by one of the words meaning c both ' or 
' two.' The nominative dual wit, meaning 6 we two/ 
received not unfrequently the word begen or bit, 'both/ 
as in the following line : — 

Ne forbete ic pe, fenden wit lifiatS bu} 

Cadmon's Genesis, I. 2256. 

Instances also occur in which bu, ' both/ and twa 
or tit, ' two/ are together added to the form of the 
dual. As the number was by no means essential to 
expression, its fate was sealed as soon as the force 
originally belonging to it was felt to be going. It sur- 
vived the Norman conquest, and lasted down to the 
beginning of the thirteenth century ; but it was never 
in any sense common. In the thirteenth century it 
disappeared entirely. 

82. The second fact to be noticed is, that the femi- 
nine nominative singular of the third person, and all 
the forms of the plural, have been entirely supplanted 
by the corresponding forms of the demonstrative pro- 
noun se, seo, ]>cet (72). This transition began to take 
place during the Early English period, but was not 
fully completed till the fifteenth century. It unques- 
tionably owed its origin to the desire of distinguishing 
between the forms of the pronoun, which had frequently 
come to be the same for different genders, cases, and 
numbers. The form he, for example, sometimes rep- 
resents in Early English the modern masculine he, the 
feminine she, and the plural they ; and likewise him or 

1 I shall not desert thee while we two both live. 



216 English Language. 

hem stands for the modern masculine him, the neuter 
it, and the plural them. The resort to the demonstra- 
tive was not unnatural, and took place for the plural 
certainly as early as the latter part of the twelfth cen- 
tury : for the feminine singular the substitution of the 
form she, derived from sed, for the original hed, seems 
to have taken place later. As usual, in all these move- 
ments the Northern dialect led the way ; but the tri- 
umph of the newer forms was a very slow one. Two 
sets of forms, indeed, lasted side by side for centuries ; 
and, even in the Middle English, here and hem are still 
used by Chaucer for the oblique cases of the plural ; 
while he employs thei or they for the nominative. 
Their and them, however, became universally adopted 
towards the close of the fifteenth century, as they had 
long before been the prevailing forms. The old ob- 
jective hem has left a relic of itself in modern speech 
in the contraction 'em, which, in books printed in the 
first part of the seventeenth century, often appears a:j 
' 'hem, as if it had been contracted from them, and were 
not itself the original form. The vulgar use of them 
in such phrases as them books seems to be a relic of 
the ancient adjectival use of this demonstrative pro- 
noun. 

83. The third point to be marked is that the original 
Anglo-Saxon accusative has disappeared, and the mod- 
ern objective case is derived, not from it, but from the 
dative ; that is to say, me comes, for example, from 
the dative me, and not the accusative mec ; him, from 
him, and not from hine ; her, from hire, and not from hi 



The Pronoun. 217 

or hed. The only exception to this is to be found in 
the neuter pronoun of the third person, in which the 
modern form it has been derived from the accusative, 
and not the dative. Yet how universal was the prefer- 
ence for the latter case is made clear by the fact, that, 
when the plural of the demonstrative se was introduced 
into the pronoun of the third person, it was the dative 
\dm, 'them/ and not the accusative yd, that was adopted 
for the objective. This disuse of the accusative began 
early. Even in Anglo-9axon the strengthened forms 
mec, \ec, tlsic, and edwic, were largely discarded for 
me, \e, us, and edw, which were the same as the dative ; 
and the former died out immediately after the Con- 
quest, if, indeed, they can be said to be existing at the 
time of it. The accusatives of the third person lasted 
longer • but early in the twelfth century they were 
sometimes supplanted by the dative, and, by the close 
of the thirteenth century, they had almost universally 
been abandoned. In the neuter pronoun the dative 
form him and the accusative hit or it were both for a 
long period in use : indeed, instances of the former 
occur late in the sixteenth century. But much before 
that time, under the increasing tendency to regard 
him as belonging exclusively to the masculine, the 
use of it for the neuter became general. 

84. Besides these general statements, certain special 
changes are to be noted in the form of the pronouns. 
In the first person, ic often passed, in Early English, 
into the form ich, and, toward the latter part of it, more 
and more into the form i. It was generally written 



21 8 English Language, 

for a long while with a small letter ; but, during the 
Middle English period, a capital was employed to 
designate it, probably for the sake of distinguishing it 
from the prefix i of the passive participle (201), as 
i-ronne. The preposition in not infrequently ap- 
peared also as /, and this may have conduced to the 
speedier adoption of the distinguishing form. In the 
first part of the Early English period the genitives 
of the first and second personal pronouns often 
dropped their final n, and accordingly exhibited the 
double forms min and mi, thin and thu The neuter 
hit came at the same time under the influence of a 
tendency which has been very powerful in all periods 
of the language, and dropped its initial h. Still both 
it and hit flourished side by side for several hundred 
years \ and while, after the fourteenth century, the 
former became more common, the latter did not die 
out entirely till the sixteenth. A form ha or a for he 
made its appearance at the beginning of the Early 
English period, and, though still found in the provin- 
cial dialects, is only of importance here from the fact 
that it is constantly employed by the Elizabethan dram- 
atists, and put into the mouths of the highest as well 
as the lowest characters. A relic of it is preserved 
in the interjection quotha, that is, ' quoth he.' 

85. At the beginning of the Middle English period 
the following paradigms of the personal pronouns ex- 
emplify the usage of Chaucer, its representative author. 
In all cases where varying forms in equally common 
use exist, and there are numbers of such, those most 



The Pronoun. 



2ig 



closely resembling Modern English have been se- 
lected. 





FIRST 


PERSON. 


SECOND PERSON, 




Singular. 


Plural. 


Singular. 


Plural. 


Nom. 


i, 




we, 


thou, 


y e ? 


Gen. 


j min, 
\ mi, 


} 


oure, 


( thm, ) 
ithi, J 


youre, 


Objec. 


me. 




us. 

THIRD 

SINGULAR. 


thee. 

PERSON. 


you. 

PLURAL. 


Masculine. 




Feminine. 


Neuter. 


All genders. 


Nom. 


he,- 




she, 


& 


they, 


Gen. 


his, 




hire, 


his, 


here, 


Objec. 


him. 




hire. 


I !?' ! 


hem. 



86. That the Middle English personal pronoun is 
about the same as the Modern English, save in certain 
forms of the third person, is evident at a glance. 
Their and them took the place of here and hem in the 
fifteenth century, as has been stated. But, up to the 
seventeenth century, his remained as the genitive of 
both the neuter and the masculine, just as the dative 
for both had for a long period been him. But by the 
end of the fifteenth century the h had become gener- 
ally discarded from hit, and, in consequence, his did 
not seem so properly the genitive of it as of he. As 
the disposition grew in strength to regard his as be- 
longing exclusively to the latter, various methods were 
resorted to in order to avoid employing it as a neuter. 



220 English Language. 

One of the earliest of these was to use it, without any 
inflection, as a genitive ; and this occurs certainly as 
early as the fourteenth century, and was common during 
the fifteenth and sixteenth. The creation and gradual 
adoption of the form its has already been told, and 
need not be here repeated. 1 Before, the Restoration 
of the Stuarts, in 1660, it had become firmly estab- 
lished in the language \ and, at the end of the 
seventeenth century, most men, doubtless, supposed it 
had always been in existence. Milton is the principal 
writer of the middle of the seventeenth century who 
exhibits any reluctance in using it. As is well known, 
it is found but three times in his poetry, and then only 
where it is almost essential to -clearness. It, however, 
was sometimes used by him in his prose. 2 

87. One thing to be especially marked in the para- 
digms given of the Middle English personal pronouns 
is, that there is no confusion between the nominative 
and objective. In Chaucer's writings — and the 
same thing is true of his contemporaries — ye and you, 
for example, are never confounded. The former is 
invariably the case of the subject ; the latter, the case 
of the object. Occasional instances of confusion 
between the two cases have been pointed out in 
writings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; but 
they are so few in number, that it is more reasonable 
to attribute them to blunders by the copyists than to 
intention on the part of the author. No such state- 
ment can be made after the beginning of the Modern 

1 Pages 129, 130. 2 E.g., Areopagitica, Arber's reprint, p. ji. 



The Pronoun, 221 

English period. In the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury the distinction between the nominative and objec- 
tive began to break down. In fact, if the language 
of the Elizabethan drama represents fairly the language 
of society, — and we can hardly take any other view, 
— the wildest license in the use of the personal 
pronouns prevailed. Me, thee, us, you, him, her, 
and them were often treated as nominatives ; while 
the corresponding nominative forms were frequently, 
though not so" commonly, treated as objectives. Mod- 
ernized editions of the authors of that period do not 
in this respect represent justly the usage of the time, 
as in all or nearly all of them changes in the text are 
silently made. In the case of ye and you this con- 
fusion has become permanently established in the lan- 
guage ; and you, the representative of the original 
dative and accusative, has now become the regular 
form for both nominative and objective. Ye is also 
still used, but likewise indifferently in the two cases, 
and with comparative infrequency in either. In the 
other pronouns the original distinction has gradually 
re-asserted itself, and is, perhaps, more strongly insisted 
upon now than at any period since the sixteenth cen- 
tury. But there still continues, in regard to these 
forms, the widest conflict of usage and opinion. Col- 
loquial phrases, such as, between you and I, have 
been handed down from the time of Queen Elizabeth ; 
while the expressions, // is me, It is him, It is her, 
have been pretty steadily in use since that period, and 
frequently by the best writers. It is to be added that 



222 English Language. 

the expressions, 7/ is I, It is he, and the similar ones, 
are not older than the fifteenth century. The form in 
Anglo-Saxon was, for example, / am it {ic eom hit), 
and this continued to be employed down to the time 
mentioned. 

88. It has already been remarked that the Anglo- 
Saxon genitives min and \>in frequently dropped their 
n in the Early English period. Precisely correspond- 
ing in form to these genitives were the adjective pro- 
nouns min and \in, which had a full set of inflections, 
according to the indefinite declension, but which also 
dropped the final n at the same time. Corresponding 
to the genitive plurals, also, were the adjective pronouns 
tire or user, ' our,' and edwer, 'your. 7 The corre- 
sponding adjective pronoun of the third person was 
sin ; but, even when Anglo-Saxon was committed to 
writing, it had died out nearly, as the original third 
personal pronoun itself had died out wholly, and been 
replaced by the demonstrative he. Sin occurs not often 
under any circumstances, and almost wholly in poetry, 
though it is not unknown to prose. 1 Its loss has been a 
serious disadvantage to the precision and clearness of 
the language ; for while its place was taken in Anglo- 
Saxon by the genitives his, hire, and hira of the third 
personal pronoun, it was not filled. 

89. These genitives of the first and second personal 
pronouns were, therefore, the same in form as the 
nominative singular of the corresponding possessive 
pronouns during the Anglo-Saxon period. But, as 

1 E.g., Blickling Homilies, p. 125, 1. 21, 



The Pro7ionn. 223 

then the former were governed directly by verbs or 
prepositions, while the latter had full adjective inflec- 
tions, the distinction between them was in most cases 
apparent. But when, on the one hand, the genitive 
became more and more confined to the expression of 
the possessive relation, and was no longer made the 
object of verbs and prepositions ; and when, on the 
other hand, the adjective inflection of the possessive 
pronoun had entirely disappeared, — then the distinc- 
tion between the two classes became rather nominal 
than real. Whether the same word should be regarded 
as the genitive of the personal pronoun, or itself as the 
possessive adjective pronoun, depended mainly upon 
definition. The genitive, especially in the plural, 
lasted down, to be sure, to the end of the fourteenth 
century, in phrases in which there could be no doubt 
as to its being a personal pronoun, such as, at oure 
alther cost} meaning " at the cost of us all ; " or, I am 
yowre alter hed, I am yowre alter hele? that is, fc< I am 
the head of you all, I am the salvation {heal) of you 
all." But such expressions as these, comparatively 
infrequent then, have not been preserved in Modern 
English : hence many grammarians consider the geni- 
tive of the personal pronouns as no longer existing, 
terming these forms, wherever they occur, possessive 
adjective pronouns. In either case their history is the 
same. 

90. The contracted forms mi and tlii, for min and 

1 Chaucer: Canterbury Tale, Prologue, I. 799. 

2 Langlande's Piers Plowman, text B., xix. 468. 



224 English Language. 

thin, made their appearance at the end of the twelfth 
century, and were at first used indifferently. Subse- 
quently, in the Middle English period, a custom sprang 
up of using win and thin before words beginning 
with a vowel or silent h, and mi and thi before conso- 
nants. This was observed, with a fair degree of regu- 
larity, up to the latter half of the sixteenth century, after 
which it became largely a matter of individual choice. 
In process of time my and thy, as they had then gen- 
erally come to be spelled, were used almost exclusively 
before nouns, and mine and thine when standing alone 
in the predicate, except in a few phrases, such as 
'mine host,' that had survived the general abandon- 
ment of the ancient usage. The e of mine and thine 
is, of course, inorganic, and may have come from its 
being used to distinguish, after the manner of the 
adjective inflection, the plural from the singular. 

91. The restriction of mine and thine to the abso- 
lute construction in the predicate was undoubtedly 
aided, to a great extent, by the creation of the forms 
oures, youres, and hires, 'hers/ and heres, 'theirs/ 
and their confinement to this same employment. Origi- 
nally the pronoun, when used absolutely in the predi- 
cate, had simply the form of the genitive of the per- 
sonal pronoun, or the nominative of the possessive ; and 
this was the prevalent practice, not only in the Anglo- 
Saxon period, but during the Early English period 
also, at least in the Midland and Southern dialects. 
For example, the sentence ' the land is ours ' would 
m the thirteenth century have appeared as ' the land 



The Pronoun. 225 

is oure! The feeling, that, in such constructions, the 
pronouns were really genitives of the personal pronoun, 
and not possessive adjectives, seems to have been the 
ruling one. But as, by the fourteenth century, s had 
become the common termination of the genitive of all 
nouns, and was the termination of his, the masculine 
and neuter genitive of the third personal pronoun, this 
letter was at last added by a false analogy to the 
other forms, and, early in the Middle English period, 
oures, y oures, hires, 'hers/ heres, ' theirs/ took their 
place alongside of the earlier oure, youre, hire, and 
here. The former, therefore, are strictly double geni- 
tives. They first made their appearance in the speech 
of the North, but, in the fourteenth century, became 
thoroughly established in the literary language of the 
Midland dialect. For a time they flourished side by 
side with the forms without s, which etymologically 
were more correct ; but in the fifteenth century they 
displaced the latter altogether, and are now the ones 
exclusively in use in the construction mentioned. 
When their was adopted as the genitive of the per- 
sonal pronoun, in place of here, it also added an s in 
such cases, like the others. 

92. This result did not happen, however, without a 
struggle. Other forms existed, which have left traces 
of themselves, in the language of the uneducated, to 
this day. The old n declension, both of the noun 
and adjective, still survived in the fourteenth century 
in certain parts of the country, and was, as we have 
seen, applied to words which had no right to it in 



226 English Language. 

Anglo-Saxon. Various dialects, consequently, espe- 
cially of the South of England, instead of forming, in 
these cases, a double genitive in s, formed one in n ; so 
that, in place of oures,youres, hires, and heres, we had 
the forms oure?i, youren, hiren, heren (i.e., their'n). 
To this the analogy of mine and thine unquestionably 
contributed. These are not infrequent in the WyclirT- 
ite version of the Bible, made about 1380. In con- 
sequence, during the latter half of the fourteenth 
century, the genitive of the personal pronoun, when 
used in the predicate, can be found in three forms, — 
without any ending, with the ending s, or with the 
ending n. The following examples will show this 
clearly : — 

I wil be youre in al that ever I may. 

Canterbury Tales, line 13,176. 

My gold is youres, whanne that you lest. 

Ib., line 14,695. 

But the erthetilieris seiden togidere, This is the eire ; come 
ye, sle we hym, and the eritage schal be ourun. — Mark xii. 8. 

The forms in n, however, speedily disappeared from 
the language of literature, though they have exhibited 
a marked vitality in the language of low life. Here, 
again, whenever their took the place of here, their'n 
was formed, after the analogy of the other forms in n, 
by those who employed the latter. In fact, this was 
sometimes extended to his, giving us hisen or his 'n as 
a collateral form. These forms in n, it is to be added, 
are often falsely explained as contractions of our 
own, your own, her own, and so forth. 



The Pronoun. 227 

g3» In Anglo-Saxon the simple personal pronouns 
were constantly employed also as reflexives ; and this 
use of them has lasted down through all periods of 
the language to this day. But the reflexive sense of 
these words was also made often more emphatic in 
the early tongue by the addition of the forms of the 
adjective self to the corresponding forms of the per- 
sonal pronouns ; thus the dative himself would be in 
Anglo-Saxon him selfum ; the accusative, hine selfne. 
During the Early English period the adjective self lost 
its inflections, and, both then and later, was, in these 
combinations, often looked upon, in consequence, as a 
substantive. In its simple form self it was at first 
usually added to the dative of all the personal pro- 
nouns ; but in process of time, while, with the pro- 
nouns of the third person, it was joined with the 
objective, with the pronouns of the first and second 
persons it was joined to the genitive ; or, perhaps, it 
would be more correct to say it was treated as a 
substantive, with which agreed the possessive adjective 
pronouns corresponding to the genitive of the pro- 
nouns of the first and second persons. This took 
place before the beginning of the Middle English 
period, and has since remained unchanged, though 
forms like his self and me ^^"respectively, occasionally 
occur much later even. The only modification that 
for a long time took place was the frequent adding of 
the inflectional syllable en, giving such forms as my- 
selven, himselven. This termination, however, did not 
denote the plural, which was not developed till near 



228 English Language. 

the end of the Middle English period : ' themselves/ 
for illustration, during nearly the whole of the fifteenth 
century, would be represented either by he?nself or 
the7nself. But in the first half of the sixteenth century 
the plural ending s was added to the forms which were 
plural in signification. The strengthened form of the 
reflexive is generally used now when the pronoun 
is the direct object of the verb ; but, when it is the 
object of some preposition accompanying the verb, 
the simple form is more common; thus we say, 'he 
laid himself down,' rather than 'he laid him down/ 
and, on the contrary, 'he looked about him/ rather 
than 'he looked about himself: ' but both expressions 
have been constantly employed from the earliest 
period. 

94. There remains one usage the consideration of 
which belongs more strictly to syntax than even the 
one just mentioned ; but, as it is of some importance 
as connected with the disuse of certain forms of the 
verb, it will receive a slight notice at this point. This 
is the general abandonment in English of the singular 
pronoun of the second person, and the substitution of 
the plural in its place. In this respect our tongue 
does not differ from the other cultivated tongues of 
modern Europe ; but, in its avoidance of this particu- 
lar form, it has gone far beyond them all. In them it 
is the language of superiority, or affectionate intimacy ; 
with us it is, outside of its employment in poetry, 
limited, for all practical purposes, to the language of 
prayer. This result has been reached gradually. The 



The Pronoun. 229 

Anglo-Saxon, like the Greek and the Latin, never used, 
in addressing an individual, any thing but the second 
person of the singular ; and this continued to be the 
case for nearly two centuries after the Conquest. The 
substitution of the plural ye and you in such cases 
made its appearance towards the close of the thir- 
teenth century; but it was then not merely little in 
use, it was restricted to narrow and well-defined limits. 
When so substituted, it was generally, if not invariably, 
employed as a mark of respect in addressing a supe- 
rior. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the use 
of the plural steadily increased, and in the sixteenth 
century it became the standard form of polite conver- 
sation. All this led to the greater disuse of thou; 
and, as thou was almost the only subject the second 
person of the verb ever had, the disuse of the pronoun 
led indirectly to the comparative disuse of this form 
of the verb, and, in some instances, to changes that 
were due to the lack of familiarity with the proper 
form in consequence of this disuse. 

The Interrogative Pronouns. 

95. In the Anglo-Saxon period the interrogative 
pronouns were hwa, ' who ; ' hwcet, ' what \ ' hwilc, 
' of what sort ; ' and hw after, 6 which of two.' During 
the twelfth century the words which had originally 
begun with the combination hw changed their form, 
and were spelled with wh; and this has from that 
time remained the universal practice. Of these four 



230 English Language, 

interrogatives, hwilc and hwcefter had a full set of 
adjective inflections according to the indefinite declen- 
sion, varying therefore with the gender. On the other 
hand, hwa was used both as a masculine and a femi- 
nine, the special feminine form which belonged to the 
primitive Teutonic having disappeared from the Anglo- 
Saxon and from the other sister-languages, with the 
exception of the Gothic. Of course, hwcet is strictly 
the neuter of hwa. 

96. In Anglo-Saxon, hwa and hwcet have the follow- 
ing inflections : — 



tfasculin 


e and Feminine. 


Neuter. 


Norn, 


hwa, 


hwoet, 


jGen. 


hwaes, 


hwses, 


Dat. 


hwam, 


hwam, 


Ace. 


hwone. 


hwone, 


Inst. 




hwy. 



97. In general it can be said that this pronoun has 
had the same history essentially as the personal pro- 
nouns, especially the pronoun of the third person. In 
the Early English period the dative hwam, 'whom,' 
supplanted the accusative hwone in the masculine, as 
him did hine. As him gradually became confined to 
this gender, and the accusative hit or it took its place 
in the neuter, so whom came, even earlier, to be used 
only of persons, and the accusative what was alone 
used when objects without life were mentioned. 
Again : just as his lost its original neuter sense, and 
was replaced by its, so whose has been limited to per- 
sons ; and, when inquiry is made in regard to things, 



The Pronoun. 231 

we now employ in place of it what or which, with the 
preposition of. So, also, in the sixteenth century, the 
same confounding of the nominative and objective 
cases that occurred with the personal pronouns oc- 
curred also with this interrogative. Whom is some- 
times used where strict grammar requires who ; but far 
more frequently was who used where whom would be 
the form expected. This is especially true of the 
Elizabethan period. In the dramatic writings of that 
time sentences such as these — 

Who have we here ? — Peele's Edward I. 
Who do you take me to be ? — Greene's George a-Greene. 
I see who he laughed at. — Jonson's Every Man in his 
Humor. 

are of constant occurrence ; and the frequency with 
which they are used by writers of every grade is clear 
proof that they were not felt to be improper. Nor has 
this usage of who for whom been limited to this period. 
It may be said to have characterized the colloquial 
speech of England from the latter half of the sixteenth 
century to the present time, if the language of con- 
versation has been justly represented in the literature 
which purports to reproduce it. 

98. Hwilc was represented in the dialects and sub- 
dialects of Early English by various forms, such as 
whilk, whulk, wuch, wich, and which, the last of these 
becoming in Middle English the established form in 
the language of literature. Like such (78), it is a 
compound of lie, Mike,' and it was originally inflected 
according to the indefinite declension of the adjective, 



232 English Language, 

and the history of its forms is included in the history 
of that part of speech. The same statement is true 
also of the interrogative hwcefter, ' which of two/ 
which was originally inflected like the indefinite adjec- 
tive. The dual sense of this word was beginning to 
fail even in the Anglo-Saxon period, and in conse- 
quence it was sometimes strengthened by the numeral, 
as in Matthew, chapter xxi. verse 31, where, in the 
Anglo-Saxon version, we read, — 

HwaeSer J>ara twegra dyde faes fa:der willan? 

which, in the sixteenth-century translation, now used 
by us, has the same construction : " Whether of them 
twain did the will of his father? " The use of whether 
as an interrogative pronoun steadily gave way, and died 
out in the seventeenth century entirely. Its place was 
taken by which. 

99. An interrogative pronoun, signifying "who of 
many," existed in the primitive Teutonic, and was 
transmitted to the Gothic and the Old Norse, but was 
not preserved in any dialect of the High Germanic or 
the Low Germanic groups. Compound forms of the 
interrogatives have been in use during every period of 
English ; but the inflection of the simple forms has 
not been in the least modified by this fact. In con- 
clusion, it is to be remarked that the instrumental case 
of hwcet (96) has given to the tongue the two inter- 
rogative adverbs how and why. 



The Pronoun. 233 

The Relative Pronouns. 

100. The Teutonic did not possess a relative in the 
strict sense of the word ; and, for the representation 
of it, the English, during every period of its history, 
has been obliged to have recourse to other pronouns. 
In Anglo-Saxon the duty of the relative was performed 
by the following words or phrases : — 

1. By the correlative form of the demonstrative se, 
the indeclinable \e. As this was indeclinable, it could 
be employed for an antecedent in any gender, number, 
or person. 

2. By the demonstrative pronoun se, seo, \cet. 

3. By the joining of the indeclinable \e to the form 
of the demonstrative, giving, for example, in the nomi- 
native singular, se ]>e, seo \e, \cet \e, or \cette. 

4. Sometimes, though far less commonly, by the 
joining of \ e to the personal pronouns. 

101. After the Conquest the use of \e was the first 
to be given up, — a result which was unavoidably 
hastened by the disposition to employ that form ex- 
clusively for the definite article : still it was used 
occasionally as late as the beginning of the thirteenth 
century. All the forms of the demonstrative se, sed, 
\at, were maintained as relatives down to the end of 
the twelfth century with a fair degree of vitality ; but 
the only one that was much in use was the neuter 
nominative and accusative singular, which speedily 
took the place of the old indeclinable \e as the repre- 
sentative of all persons, genders, numbers, and cases. 



234 English Language. 

By the middle of the thirteenth century the use of 
that as a general relative, referring both to persons and 
things, was universally established, and such it has 
remained through every subsequent period of English. 
Other words have taken their place alongside of it; 
but there has never been a time since the twelfth cen- 
tury when it has not been in constant employment as 
a relative. 

102. With this form alone, however, the language 
was not content, and at an early period it began to 
resort to the interrogative pronouns for additional 
relatives. The first that came into general use was 
which. The employment of this interrogative as a 
relative goes back to the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, and by the end of the fourteenth it was 
thoroughly established. It was sometimes preceded 
by the definite article, giving us the expression the 
which ; it was sometimes followed by that; but it was 
more frequently used alone. 1 From the fourteenth to 
the seventeenth century it was as regularly employed 
in reference to persons as to things, an idiom which 
had been made familiar to all by the phrase " Our 
Father which art in heaven," occurring in the Lord's 

1 The use of which as a relative without that was common in the four- 
teenth century; but, as the assertion is frequently made that such is not the 
case, it has been thought best to add the following references, which might be 
multiplied indefinitely, — in Chaucer's Parlament of Foules, lines 29, 34, 84, 
in, 126, 136, 142, 170, 248, 287, 333, 39s ; in Purvey's Recension of the 
Wycliffile Version of the Bible, Mark ii. 4; iii. 28; iv. 16, 20, 31; v. 3; vi. 2; 
viii. 5, 28; ix. 2; x. 5, 30, 38-40; xi. 2; xii. 14, 40; xiii. 2, 19, 20; xiv. 24; 
xv. 40, 42; xvi. 10; Dan. i. 4, 18, 20; ii. 11, 23, 28, 38, 41; iii. 2-5, 7, 12-15, 
18, 27, 28,31,36, 52, 88, 91, &c. 



The Pronoun. 235 

Prayer. In the seventeenth century the tendency 
manifested itself, with the increasing use of who as a 
relative, to confine the reference of which to things ; 
and this has now become the general practice in the 
language, though exceptions are still to be met with, 
especially in poetry. It shows how thoroughly the 
sense of the ancient usage had been lost, and how 
complete the distinction between the two pronouns 
had become in the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, that this particular expression quoted above was 
attacked by Steele in No. 78 of "The Spectator," 
which appeared in May, 1711. He appended to this 
paper " the humble petition of who and which' 1 
wherein a protest was uttered both against the con- 
stant employment of that instead of them as a relative, 
and against their being confounded with each other. 
" In the first and best prayer children are taught," says 
the petition, " they learn to misuse us. * Our Father 
which art in heaven' should be 'our Father who art in 
heaven ; ' and even a convocation, after long debates, 
refused to consent to an alteration of it." 

103. About as early as which, whose, and whom, the 
oblique cases of the interrogative who were also used 
as relatives. This practice may be said to have begun 
early in the thirteenth century, and to have steadily 
increased in use from that time. But it was not till 
the beginning of the sixteenth century that the use of 
the nominative who as a relative was established, 
though occasional instances of such an employment 
of it occur earlier. Nor was who, even during the 



236 English Language. 

sixteenth century, common as a relative, though con- 
stantly becoming more so ; but in the seventeenth 
century it came into general use. From the beginning 
it had not been limited to persons, but also referred to 
things. From the latter, however, it was gradually shut 
out by the distinction that gradually developed itself 
between it and which, in accordance wherewith the 
former was confined to personal and the latter to 
impersonal antecedents. In this matter the objective 
whom has the same history as the nominative who ; 
but the genitive whose has, during all the periods of 
Modern English, been applied equally to persons and 
to things. In the latter usage it is etymologically the 
genitive, not of who, but of what (96) ; but in sense 
it corresponds to c of which.' 

104. The confusion between the nominative and 
objective of the interrogative who naturally extended 
itself to the word when used as a relative. In one 
instance the confusion has perpetuated itself to our 
own time, and has become established in usage. This 
is in the phrase than whom, which has been both 
common and classical from the latter half of the six- 
teenth century. Modern grammarians, in this case, 
are often disposed in consequence to treat than, not as 
a conjunction, but as a preposition. 

105. The indefinite pronouns, as has been stated, 
had either the inflection of the noun or of the adjec- 
tive, usually the latter. Those which existed in Anglo- 
Saxon, excluding the compound forms, have been 
transmitted to Modern English, with two exceptions : 



The Pronoun. 237 

these arefe/a, e many/ and man, 'one.' The former, 
in Early English, passed into the form felc ; the latter, 
into men, or, with the n dropped, into me ; and both 
died out in the fifteenth century. Hwa, ' some one/ 
was in Anglo-Saxon also used as an indefinite pro- 
noun, and lasted down to the seventeenth century in 
certain phrases, such as, "as who should say/' which, 
indeed, in poetry, are not yet entirely obsolete. An- 
other indefinite pronoun, an, 'a certain/ was also the 
numeral 'one/ and, even during the Anglo-Saxon 
period, had sometimes the force merely of the indefi- 
nite article. Its confinement to this usage became 
more thoroughly established after the Norman con- 
quest ; and in Early English the custom arose of drop- 
ping the final n before vowels, or a silent h, which, 
with slight exceptions, has been followed to the present 
day. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE VERB. 
THE TEUTONIC VERB. GENERAL STATEMENTS. 

106. To all the Teutonic languages the following 
parts of the verb were common from the earliest period 
of their history : — 

i. Two leading conjugations. 

2. One voice, — the active. 

3. Three finite moods. These are the indicative, 
the subjunctive, — sometimes called the conjunctive, 
and corresponding to the Greek optative, — and the 
imperative. 

4. An infinitive, and an active and a passive par- 
ticiple. 

5. Two simple tenses, — the present and the pret- 
erite. 

6. Two numbers, — the singular and the plural. 

7. Three persons, — the first, second, and third. 

107. Besides these forms common to all, the Gothic 
retained a middle voice (used generally in a passive 

238 



The Verb. 239 

sense) and a dual number (confined to the first and 
second persons). The primitive method of forming 
the preterite by reduplication, exemplified also in Latin 
by such forms as mordeo, mo-mordi, tundo, tn-tudi, 
it likewise preserved in some forty verbs ; but of this 
traces only can be found in the other Teutonic lan- 
guages. 

108. Excluding the Gothic, the Teutonic has ac- 
cordingly lost, of the parts belonging to the primitive 
Indo-European verb, the middle voice (also used as a 
passive), the mood corresponding to the Greek sub- 
junctive, the imperfect, aorist, and future tenses, and 
the dual number. 

icg. According to its method of forming the pret- 
erite, the Teutonic verb is divided into two great 
conjugations. One is variously called the Old, the 
Primary, or the Strong conjugation ; the other, the 
New, the Secondary, or the Weak conjugation. The 
distinguishing characteristic is, that verbs of the latter 
conjugation add an additional syllable to the root to 
form the preterite. This additional syllable, in some 
modern Teutonic tongues, noticeably in English, has 
been, in many cases, cut down to a single letter. 
Examples of this conjugation are words like kill, 
kill-ed, love, love-d. On the other hand, verbs of the 
former conjugation add nothing to form the preterite. 
Thus, in Anglo-Saxon, singan meant c to sing : ' the 
present tense, first person singular, was sing-e ; the 
preterite of the same person was sang. No syllable 
was added, as in the case of kill and love. But to this 



240 English Language. 

conjugation belongs a variation of the radical vowel, 
which, in the instance just cited, is exemplified by the 
change of i to a. This is, indeed, one of its most 
marked features, and one which has been preserved in 
its whole subsequent history. But as variation of the 
vowel, though not due to the same cause, is found in 
a few verbs of the conjugation which adds a syllable to 
form the preterite, this variation cannot be regarded 
as a distinctive peculiarity. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon 
present sell-e has for its preterite seal-de, the e of 
the one tense having become ea in the other; and 
Modern English still retains this peculiarity in the 
present sell and the preterite sol-d. Accordingly, 
it is the adding, or not adding, of a syllable, which is 
the original fundamental distinction between the two 
conjugations, and not the variation of vowel. 

no. The terms Old and Primary are employed 
because the verbs belonging to the conjugation so- 
called are the primitive verbs of the Teutonic. It is 
from them, or from nouns, that the verbs of the New 
or Secondary conjugation have been derived, and their 
name corresponds to their origin. The terms Strong 
and Weak were first applied by Grimm, on the theory 
that verbs of the one conjugation expressed the idea 
of past time by a mere modification of their own 
resources, that is, by changing the radical vowel ; 
while those of the other had to call in the help of an 
additional syllable to achieve the same result. Though 
this terminology is somewhat fanciful, it is convenient, 
and has come into general use, and in this treatise 



The Verb, 241 

will be ordinarily employed. The terms Regular and 
Irregular, found generally in English grammars, are 
scientifically incorrect, because they blend in one class 
the strong verbs and the anomalous verbs of the weak 
conjugation. 

in. The syllable which is added to form the pret- 
erite of verbs of the weak conjugation is supposed, 
according to the generally received theory, to be the 
reduplicated perfect of a verb corresponding to the 
English verb do. In Anglo-Saxon the infinitive of 
this was don, and its preterite, dide, the present did: 
in Old High German the corresponding forms were 
tuon and teta. The reduplicated form of this verb is 
not preserved in its complete state in the preterites of 
any of the weak verbs in the Teutonic languages, 
except in Gothic ; and there it is not found in the 
singular, but is found in the dual and plural. For 
illustration, the first person plural of the preterite of 
the Gothic verb haban, 'to have,' is habai-dedum, 
which is strictly have-did-we, equivalent to we did 
have. 

112. One further distinction also exists between 
the strong and the weak conjugation. This is in the 
passive participle. In the former, the suffix was -an, 
usually weakened into -en, as seen still in the English 
driv-en : for the latter it was -d or -/, as seen in Eng- 
lish love-d, taitgh-t. 

113. These are characteristics which English shares 
with all the other Teutonic languages. In the Anglo- 
Saxon these two conjugations above described, with 



242 Englisli Language. 

all their distinctive peculiarities, were flourishing, and 
they have lasted down to the present time. But in 
the course of their history great changes have taken 
place in their relative size and importance. The most 
obvious fact is, that verbs of the strong conjugation 
have in Modern English become so few, and verbs of 
the weak conjugation so numerous, that the former, 
when compared with the latter, are apt to seem like 
exceptions to the general rule. Many strong verbs 
have disappeared altogether ; many have passed over 
to the weak conjugation ; a few have complete forms 
of both conjugations ; in others, again, the conjugations 
have been confounded, the preterite being formed 
according to the one, and the past participle according 
to the other ; while, on the other hand, a still smaller 
number have passed over from the weak to the strong. 
The details of all these changes will be given in the 
history of the losses and gains of the two conjugations. 

CONFLICT OF THE STRONG AND WEAK CONJUGATIONS. 

114. In the English of the Anglo-Saxon period the 
strong conjugation was divided into a number of sub- 
ordinate conjugations, the distinctions between which 
will be given later. The diminution in the number of 
verbs belonging to the strong conjugation — either by 
the loss to the language of the verbs themselves, or by 
their transition to the weak conjugation — is the matter 
of most essential importance, bringing to light, as it 
does, the origin of the anomalies that are to be found 
in the existing inflection of the verb in our tongue. 



The Verb. 243 

115. In the Anglo-Saxon there were more than 
three hundred simple verbs of the strong conjugation : 
in Modern English there are less than one hundred, 
showing a diminution of more than two-thirds. But 
even this gives no adequate conception of the loss. 
As the number of formative prefixes was far larger in 
Anglo-Saxon than in Modern English, the number of 
compound verbs created by the addition of these pre- 
fixes to the simple verb was necessarily much larger. 
Thus, in Anglo-Saxon, some ten new verbs were formed 
by the addition of ten different prefixes to standan : of 
these ten, Modern English has retained only with and 
under; so that, from this same verb, we now form two 
verbs only, withstand and understand, instead of the 
original ten. The disproportion between the earlier 
and the later form of the language, in respect to the 
number of strong verbs, is consequently much greater 
than would be implied by a loss of two-thirds. 

116. The causes of this loss are not hard to find. 
Even during the Anglo-Saxon period all verbs derived 
from nouns or other verbs were inflected according to 
the weak conjugation. Such was the case also with 
the few foreign verbs that were from time to time intro- 
duced. On the other hand, the strong conjugation 
received no accessions. Under any circumstances, 
therefore, the number of weak verbs would be con- 
stantly increasing ; while the strong, by simply remain- 
ing the same, would become a proportionally smaller 
fraction of the whole. It was an inevitable result of 
this, that the tendency would manifest itself at some 



244 English Language. 

time to inflect all verbs in the way that the ma- 
jority of them were inflected ; and there is evidence 
that this was beginning to exert some influence in the 
language as it is found written before the Norman 
conquest. Many of the strong verbs have weak 
derivative verbs with precisely the same meaning 
alongside of them. In some cases a weak derivative 
verb exists as the representative of a strong verb that 
had gone out of use in Anglo-Saxon, but has been 
preserved in other early Teutonic languages. But a 
special cause operated to hasten the change in the 
relative numbers of the two conjugations, and to 
widen vastly the disproportion already beginning to 
exist. The Norman conquest made French the lan- 
guage of the cultivated classes, and left the native 
tongue to be used exclusively by the more uneducated 
portion of the community. Confusion speedily sprang 
up between the two conjugations in the speech of 
ignorant men, and, in process of time, became estab- 
lished by custom in the speech of all. The tendency 
to bring about uniformity at any cost now began to 
make itself powerfully felt in causing the inflection of 
verbs belonging to the smaller class to conform to that 
of the larger; just as, in modern times, under the 
influence of this same tendency, children and unedu- 
cated men say drinked for drank, drawed for drew, 
seed for saw, and knowed for knew. This was inevi- 
tably the source of much loss ; but, great as it was, it 
was not to be compared with the effects produced by 
the influx of foreign words from the French, whi^h, 



The Verb. 245 

beginning toward the end of the thirteenth century, 
culminated in revolutionizing the vocabulary in the 
century following. All the new verbs taken from the 
French were inflected according to the weak conjuga- 
tion ; and with their introduction dropped out of use 
a large number of Anglo-Saxon verbs. Many of these 
belonged to the strong conjugation, and their loss to 
it could never be replaced. The consequence was, 
that, at the beginning of the Middle English period, 
the whole number of strong verbs in the language had 
become comparatively small. Not only was this true, 
but it seemed as if, under the influence of the ten- 
dency to uniformity, they were about to disappear 
altogether. 

117. The transition of verbs of the strong conjuga- 
tion to that of the weak was arrested, however, as soon 
as the influence of literary models — the great con- 
servative agency in speech — began to make itself 
widely felt. The movement in this direction, which 
had been going on steadily since the Norman con- 
quest, received its first check in the latter half of the 
fourteenth century with the rise of a native literature 
of a high order. The usage of Chaucer, so far as it 
is exemplified in "The Canterbury Tales," has been 
already pointed out, and contrasted with that of the 
present time. 1 From his age the tendency of the 
strong verbs to become weak became less and less 
conspicuous, and at the end of the Middle English 
period had ceased entirely. Modern English has lost 

1 See pp. 119, ff. 



246 English Language. 

not a single one since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
What the language then had it has ever since retained, 
nor does it manifest the least disposition to abandon 
any it now has. True, there have been periods in 
which weak preterites and past participles, like choosed, 
blowed, chided, corned, weaved, and numerous others, 
have been, to a greater or less extent, in use, and in 
most periods have been persistently urged by some 
grammarians. But their use has never broadened 
and perpetuated itself. In fact, the present disposition 
of the language is not only to hold firmly to the strong 
verbs it already possesses, but to strengthen their hold, 
and even to extend their number whenever possible. 
Forms once common, and in the best usage, such as 
shaked, shined, strived, and thrived, are now much 
rarer than shook, shone, strove, and throve, or else are 
not met with at all. Woke, though not found in 
Shakspeare, Milton, and the English Bible, has be- 
come, during the last century, full as common as 
waked as the preterite of wake ; while dug may be said 
to have supplanted digged, the regular preterite, not 
only of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but 
of all preceding periods. 

118. The history of the English verb is, therefore, 
from one point of view, the history of a conflict be- 
tween the weak and the strong conjugations, in which 
the former steadily tended for three centuries to become 
the one exclusively in use. The arrest of the develop- 
ment in this direction, which overtook the verb in the 
fourteenth century, was the main cause that all our 



The Verb. 247 

verbs are not now inflected according to the weak 
conjugation. Still it was inevitable that the stoppage 
of the transition that had been going on from the 
strong to the weak inflection should cause many appar- 
ently anomalous and irregular forms to appear in the 
language ; and a satisfactory account of the later his- 
tory of the strong conjugation has been made a task 
of no slight difficulty, in consequence of the irregu- 
larities that appear in many verbs, and the seemingly 
capricious changes that have taken place in their 
inflections at various periods. 

119. The first point of importance to be mentioned 
in the history of the strong conjugation is, that more 
than a hundred simple verbs originally belonging to 
it have disappeared from the language entirely. Some 
of these had clearly become obsolete in later Anglo- 
Saxon ; but of those that were in common use during 
that period, and have since been dropped, the places 
have, in the majority of instances, been taken by verbs 
derived from the Norman French. 

120. The next point is, that a hundred and eight 
verbs, which, in Anglo-Saxon, belonged to the strong 
conjugation, have passed over wholly or partially to 
the weak. The list embraces many of the most com- 
mon words of the language, and, in enumerating them, 
they will be arranged according to the classes of strong 
verbs as laid down in sections 142 to 148 inclusive. 
In some of them there has been only a partial trans- 
fer. They have retained strong forms in equal au- 
thority with the weak, or even in greater. They have 



248 



EuglisJi Language. 



retained strong forms in poetry, while dropping them 
in prose ; or they have retained simply either a strong 
participial form, or a strong preterite form. These 
variations will be discussed later. In the following 
lists the verbs that still exhibit any of the original 
inflections will be denoted by Italics. 

121. Of the verbs originally belonging to Class 
I. of strong verbs (142) the following have become 
weak : — 

1. ban. 9. hew. 17. sow. 

2. blend. 10. hight. 18. span. 

3. blow (' to bloom *). 11. leap. 19. sweep. 

4. crow. 12. let. 20. walk. 

5. dread. 13. low. 21. weep. 

6. flow. 14. mow. 22. well. 

7. fold. 15. row. 23. whoop. 

8. hang. 16. sleep. 24. wield 

122. Of the verbs which originally belonged to 
Class II. of the strong conjugation (143), the follow- 
ing are now inflected, wholly or partially, according to 
the weak : — 



1. bark. 


7. delve. 


13. quench. 


19. thresh. 


2. bellow. 


8. ding. 


14, spurn. 


20. warp. 


3. braid. 


9. help. 


15. starve. 


21. wind. 


4. burn. 


10. melt. 


16. stint. 


22. yell. 


5. burst. 


11. milk. 


17. swallow. 


23. yelp. 


6. carve. 


12. mourn. 


18. swell. 


24. yield. 



To these might be added swi?ik, e to toil,' which is 
still found at times in poetry, though obsolete in prose. 

123. Of Class III. (144) about half of the original 
number survived, and, of these, a small proportion 



The Verb, 



249 



only went over to the weak conjugation. They are 
the following : — 

1. fret (compound of eat), 5. shear, 

2. knead. 6. sneak. 

3. mete. 7. weave, 

4. (be-) queathe. 8. wreak. 

124. Most of the Anglo-Saxon verbs belonging to 
Class IV. (146) have been preserved in Modern Eng- 
lish, though the large majority of them have gone over 
entirely or partially to the weak conjugation. The 
following is the list of these : — 

1. ache. 

2. bake. 

3. drag. 

4. fare. 

5. flay. 10. laugh. 

6. gnaw. 11. scathe. 

Of these verbs lade and load come directly from 
the same primitive, as also the strong verb draw is 
derived from the same word as the weak verb drag, 

125. Of the verbs belonging to Class V. (147) the 
following have become weak wholly or partially : — 



7. grave, 

8. heave, 

9. lade> I 
load. ) 



12. shape, 

13. shave, 

14. step. 

15. wade. 

16. wash. 

17. wax. 



1. cleave (' to adhere '). 

2. glide. 

3. gripe. 

4. reap. 

5. shrive. 



II. 


twit. 


12. 


writhe, 




wreathe 


13- 


wipe. 


14. 


yawn. 



6. sigh. 

7. slip. 

8. slit. 

9. spew. 
10. streak ( f to go'). 

Here, again, writhe and wreathe come from the 
same original, and twit is a compound, and not a simple 
verb : it comes from the Anglo-Saxon cetwitan ; and 
the simple verb witan lasted to the Middle English 
period as wite, ' to blame/ ' to find fault with.' 



250 



English Language. 



126. But few verbs of Class VI. (148) preserved 
the strong inflection. Nearly half of the original 
number went over to the weak conjugation. They are 
the following : — 

9. float. 17. shove. 

10. lie (' to deceive '). 18. slip. 

11. lock. 19. smoke. 

12. lose. 20. sprout. 

13. reek. 21. suck. 

14. rive, 22. sup. 

15. rue. 

16. seethe. 



1. bow. 

2. brew. 

3. brook. 

4. chew. 

5. cleave (' to split '). 

6. creep. 

7. dive, 

8. flee. 



127. Of the above-mentioned verbs of all the classes, 
many have, even in Anglo-Saxon, weak derivative 
forms along with the strong ones ; so that, in some 
instances, it would be more proper to say that the 
strong verb has been dropped entirely, and the weak 
verb, possessing the same signification, has been re- 
tained, rather than that the existing verb has passed 
over from the strong to the weak conjugation. Thus, 
besides the Anglo-Saxon strong verb smeocan, 'to 
smoke/ there is also a weak derivative verb, smocian, 
6 to smoke ; ' and it is from the latter of these, rather 
than the former, that the Modern English verb may, 
perhaps, more justly be said to come. The same is 
the case with the strong verb bland an, and the weak 
verb blendan, derived from it. Both mean 'blend ; ' 
and our modern word is as much derived from the 
weak verb as from the strong, if the former is not to be 
regarded as the real original. There are about twenty 
instances in which verbs in the above lists can be 



The Verb. 2 * 1 



referred to two Anglo-Saxon verbs, one w£ak and one 
strong, of which two of the most conspicuous are 
hang and yawn. 

128. Many of the verbs mentioned in these lists, 
and not Italicized, can be found, especially in Early 
and Middle English, and even in the first century of 
Modern English, exhibiting strong forms. This is par- 
ticularly true of the passive participle, of which the 
adjective use caused it sometimes to be retained in 
the speech when the rest of the verb had disappeared 
from the tongue entirely, or exhibited only the weak 
inflection. This past participle of the strong conju- 
gation invariably ended in en in the earliest period 
of the language. When a verb of this conjugation 
became weak, it occasionally left behind its original 
participle, though very rarely used save as an adjec- 
tive. Burs ten and carven and molten and writlien or 
wreathen are examples of strong past participles, which 
remain as adjectives after the verbs to which they 
belong have passed over to the weak conjugation. 
Even more marked are lorn and its compound for- 
lorn, originally the participles of lose and forlose. To 
this list may perhaps be added the adjective rotten, 
though the strong Anglo-Saxon verb from which the 
form comes has a different meaning. The earlier 
literature furnishes frequent instances of such survivals, 
as baken, kneaden, yolden, was/ten, and others, which 
lasted down to the sixteenth century, and occasionally 
even later. 

129. Certain verbs originally strong have under- 



252 



English Language. 



gone a partial transfer to the weak conjugation ; that 
is to say, while taking the weak inflection, they have 
also retained the strong. They have, in consequence, 
a double set of forms. In some cases, it may be said 
that the strong inflections are confined to the language 
of poetry, or to the colloquial speech ; in others, they 
are used only in certain styles, especially in the ar- 
chaic ; while in others, again, they are far more com- 
mon than the weak forms. On all these points, usage 
is so various, it differs so much at different times, that 
all special statements are liable to occasional excep- 
tions. The following is the list of verbs, originally 
strong, that are now inflected throughout according 
to both conjugations : — 



Infinitives. 

1. cleave ('to split'), 

2. hang, 

3. help, 

4. heave, 

5. seethe, 

6. shear, 

7. shine, 

8. shrive, 



Preterites. 

clove, j 
cleft or \ 
cleaved, ) 
hung, ) 
hanged, i 

helped, ) 
holp, ) 

heaved, ) 
hove, ) 
seethed, ) 
sod, ) 

sheared, ) 
shore, ) 
shined, ) 
shone, ) 
shrived, ) 
shrove, ) 



Past Participles 
cloven, 
cleft or 

cleaved. - 

hung. i 

hanged. ! 
helped, 

holp or ( 

holpen. . 

heaved, j 

hove. ! 

seethed, j 

sodden. ! 

sheared, j 

shorn. ! 

shined. ] 
shone 
shrived 
shriven, 



:1 



The Verb. 



253 



10. 



n. 



Past Participles, 
thrived, 
thriven, 
weaved 
woven 
winded 
wound 



! 



Infinitives. Preterites. 

thrived, ) 

thrive ' throve, J 

weaved, ) 

weave ' wove, J 

winded, ) 

wind > wound, J 

For stave and strive, see sects. 135, 137. 

In reference to the verbs included in this list, it is 
to be added that hang derives its weak inflection from 
the Anglo-Saxon weak verb hangian, hangode ; and 
that wind as an original strong verb means strictly 
1 to turn about something fixed ; ' and that, in the sense 
of 'to sound by blowing/ it is derived from the noun 
wind, and etymologically should have a weak preterite 
winded. But the two inflections have become inex- 
tricably involved, and are used of the word in both its 
significations, with a decided preference in each for 
the strong. 

130. But, in addition to these, there are certain 
verbs originally strong which have adopted in the 
passive participle the weak form, but have preterites 
belonging to both conjugations. Of these there are 
the following four : — 

Preterites, 
cleaved, ) 
clave, S 
climbed, ) 
clomb, ) 
crowed, ) 
crew, ) 
waked, ) 
woke, ) 



2. 



Infinitives. 

cleave (* to adhere '), 
climb, 



3. crow, 



4. wake, 



Past Participles, 
cleaved. 

climbed. 

crowed. 

waked. 



254 English Language. 

In regard to these it is to be remarked that clomb 
and clave belong to the language of poetry rather than 
that of prose ; and also that the forms of cleave, mean- 
ing ' adhere,' and cleave, meaning ' split,' have been 
and still are frequently confounded. The preterite 
woke, after almost disappearing for several centuries 
from the language of literature, — so much so that it 
is not even recognized in our dictionaries, — has, 
during the present century, become full as common as 
the weak form waked, and, indeed, has occasionally 
made its way into the passive participle ; and it might 
perhaps be more proper to add both wake and climb 
to the list of those verbs that have strong and weak 
forms throughout. 

131. It is the preterite that strictly decides whether 
a particular word belongs to the strong or the weak 
conjugation ; but it is a striking fact that the strong 
passive participle has been retained in many cases 
where the strong preterite has been abandoned. There 
are some nine verbs originally inflected strong, but now 
weak, that still cling also to their ancient participial 
form. , The following is the list : — 

1. grave, 



graved, . graved ' } 

graven. ) 

2. hew, hewed, if 

hewn. ) 

-\. lade, laded, . . ' \ 

' laden. ) 

, mowed, ) 

4. mow, mowed, \ 

mown. ) 

rived, r ! ved ' } 

riven. ) 



5. rive, 



The Verb. 255 

6. shape, shaped, J^J [ 

7. shave, shaved, . ' \ 

shaven. ) 

o j sowed, ( 

8. sow, sowed, \ 

sown. ) 

ii n j swelled, ) 

9. swell, swelled, .. ( 
y swollen. ) 

To these may perhaps be properly added gnaw and 
wax, which occasionally exhibit the strong participial 
forms gnawn and waxen. For the forms hidden, 
loaden, sawn, shown, strown, and proven, see sects. 

i34 ? i3 8 > !39- 

132. These complete the list of existing verbs in 

the language that were, in Anglo-Saxon, inflected 
according to the strong conjugation, but are now 
inflected wholly or partly according to the weak. It 
is to be added, however, that the forms here given are 
the ones found more or less in present usage. If we 
go back to that of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, we shall find a number of strong verbs, 
which in the language of certain writers, if not of all, 
have weak inflections that are not mentioned here. 
Forms, indeed, such as shaked, chided, wringed, freezed, 
corned, and several others, are to be met in some 
or in all periods of Modern English, just as, in the 
fourteenth century, growed was constantly used along 
with grew, by the best writers, and, indeed, seemed to 
be preferred. 

133. It is evident from the above that the English 
strong conjugation has steadily lost, from the Norman 



256 English Language. 

conquest up to the sixteenth century, in the number 
of verbs belonging to it. Still there have been some 
compensating gains. The general rule has been given, 
that all verbs derived from nouns or from other verbs, 
and all verbs taken from foreign tongues, are inflected 
according to the weak conjugation. But to this cer- 
tain words are exceptions, and each of them has a 
separate history of its own. 

134. The following are the verbs which were origi- 
nally inflected weak, but have, at a later period, passed 
over to the strong conjugation : — 

1. Dig is a word of somewhat uncertain origin, 
though the derivation from A. S. dician, dicode, ' to 
make a dike, mound, or ditch/ seems much the most 
reasonable. In the form in which it now appears it 
does not seem to have been used before the fourteenth 
century. It had then, and for several centuries follow- 
ing, the weak preterite and past participle digged. The 
strong form, dug, apparently did not become common, 
if, indeed, it was known at all, until the eighteenth 
century. 

2. The verb spit, as early certainly as the Middle 
English period, developed a strong inflection — spit, 
spat, spitten — alongside of the weak one ; but the 
former never seems to have been as common at any 
time as the latter, though it is found occasionally at all 
times since its origin. The verb comes directly from 
the Anglo-Saxon weak verb spittan, spitte ; and the 
strong forms are unknown till much later. It is not 
impossible that the analogy of verbs like sit, as origi- 



The Verb. 257 

nally inflected, sit, sat, sitten, may have had some 
influence in causing a transition, unless, in all such 
cases, we assume that a strong verb was in use in the 
original colloquial speech, but did not find its way 
into literature. 

3. Stick is derived directly from the weak Anglo- 
Saxon verb stician, sticode, having precisely the same 
meaning. The forms stiked for the preterite and past 
participle are common in the literary language of the 
fourteenth century ; but, in the sixteenth, stuck had 
taken its place as the regular form. There was an 
Early English strong verb, stiken, stek, or stak ; but 
to this the transition does not seem to have been due. 

4. Wear is derived directly from the Anglo-Saxon 
weak verb werian, werede. In the literary language 
of the fourteenth century werede and wered are the 
forms of the preterite and passive participle ; but, by 
the end of the Middle English period, the preterite 
ware or wore came in, and the participle worn. 
There is not much doubt that the transition to the 
strong conjugation was brought about by the influence 
of the strong inflection, as seen in such words as bear, 
tear, and swear, closely related in sound. 

5. To this list the word hide may be added, though 
it is still generally reckoned among the verbs of the 
weak conjugation which have suffered contraction in 
the preterite and passive participle. In the Middle 
English period, however, en, the characteristic termi- 
nation of the strong past participle, was added to the 
weak past participle hid ; and from that time hidden 



258 English Language, 

and hid have both been in established use. It seems 
better, therefore, to regard this inflection hide, hid, 
hidden or hid, as now one of the strong conjugation, 
like chide, chid, chidden or chid, and slide, slid, slidden 
or slid, than as an irregular verb of the weak con- 
jugation. 

135. These are the only verbs, originally weak, that 
have passed over entirely to the strong conjugation. 
Besides these there are the two following, w^iich are 
derived from nouns that have, in the later periods of 
the language, received the strong inflection : — 

1. String is a verb that has apparently been formed 
from the Anglo-Saxon noun string or strenge, c string.' 
It is certainly not common before the sixteenth cen- 
tury, though it would be venturesome to assert that it 
had not a much earlier existence. Though the parti- 
cipial adjective stringed has been much in use, it is 
most likely that the verb, from the beginning of its 
formation, was inflected string, strung, strung, accord- 
ing to the strong conjugation, after the analogy of 
swing, swung ; sing, sung ; and numerous others. 

2. The verb stave seems to be, like string, a modern 
formation, and is formed directly from the substantive 
stave or staff. It has both a weak and a strong pret- 
erite, staved and stove, and corresponding passive 
participles. The weak forms are far more common, 
however, before the present century. 

136. The two following, of somewhat uncertain 
derivation, are also inflected strong. Neither of them 
is known to the earliest period of the language. 



The Verb. 259 

t. The first is fling, which, perhaps, came to our 
tongue from the Norse. It is first found in the Early- 
English period, and has never been inflected otherwise 
than according to the strong conjugation. 

2. The second is the technical naval verb reeve, 
rove, rove. Its derivation is uncertain, and it proba- 
bly belongs exclusively to Modern English. 

137. One Romance word has also passed over par- 
tially to the strong conjugation : this is the verb strive, 
taken directly from the old French estriver, which is 
itself, however, derived from a Teutonic noun. From 
its very entrance into the language it was inflected 
according to both conjugations, the strong inflection 
having, doubtless, been assumed by it after the analogy 
of drive, drove, driven ; thi'ive, throve, thriven : and 
from the fourteenth century to the present time the 
strong and weak preterites strove and strived can be 
found side by side, as likewise the passive participles 
striven and strived. The language at present prefers 
the strong forms. 

138. Three weak verbs showed a tendency to pass 
over to the strong conjugation, and, in the case of 
each, a strong passive participle has been added to 
their inflection. They are the following : — 

, . , showed, I 

1. show, showed, . \ 

shown. ) 

, strewed, ) 

2. strew, strewed, ( 

strewn. ) 

sawed, ) 

3. saw, sawed, ( 
J sawn. ) 



260 English Language. 

The first of these is derived from the Anglo-Saxon 
weak verb sceawian, sceawode : the second, which is 
often written and oftener pronounced as strow, is from 
the Anglo-Saxon weak verb stredwian, stredwode. It 
was in the Middle English period that the strong parti- 
cipial forms of these two words came into use along- 
side of the weak ones ; and, as in like instances, the 
analogy of verbs like know, blow, grow, and others, 
had the most powerful influence in their production 
and wide employment. But the strong forms never 
extended beyond the past participle, though the strong 
preterite shew for showed early established itself in the 
provincial dialects, and has never died out. Saw, as 
a verb, does not apparently go back to an early period. 
It was doubtless derived from the noun spelled in the 
same way, and its strong past participle seems to have 
been developed first in Modern English. To this list 
might justly also be added the verb load, which still 
has at times a passive participle loaden, though this is 
far from being as common as laden. But lade and 
load are both derived from the same Anglo-Saxon 
strong verb. 

139. The addition of the strong participial ending 
en to verbs originally weak has met with success in the 
case of hidden, shown, strown, and sawn. It is 
probable, though it has never been proved, that some, 
if not all, of these forms came originally into the 
literary language from the Northern dialect. When, 
two or three centuries after the Norman conquest, that 
dialect re-appears once more in literature, one of its 



The Verb. 261 

special characteristics is its inclination to retain the full 
form en of the strong passive participle ; while, on the 
other hand, the dialect of the South was early dis- 
posed to drop the n. The modern participle sung, in 
consequence, would be in the thirteenth century in 
the one speech sungen, in the other sunge, or y-sunge. 
But not only did the Northern dialect so prefer the 
termination en as to retain it in the cases where it 
strictly belonged, it also manifested the disposition to 
add it to words to which it did not properly belong. 
Certain ■ weak verbs, such as cast, cut, put, thrust, 
mainly of Scandinavian origin, added to the weak pas- 
sive participle, which by contraction had become the 
same as the infinitive, as in Modern English, the end- 
ing en, giving us such forms as c as ten, cutten, putten, 
thrusten or thro s sen ; and precisely of a similar forma- 
tion is the verbal adjective boughten, not infrequent in 
America. It cannot be said that such forms as these 
have ever made their way to any extent beyond the 
dialects in which they originated ; but scattered 
through the whole of Modern English literature are 
occasional instances of the substitution of a strong 
participial termination for that of a weak one \ as, for 
instance, paven as used by Milton (Comus, line 886). 
One marked form is, however, here to be noticed : this 
is the past participle proven for proved. The word is 
derived from the French, and in literary use has been 
inflected, until the present century, like all other for- 
eign verbs, according to the weak conjugation through- 
out. But the strong participial form proven has made 



262 English Language. 

its way from the Scottish sub-dialect of the Northern 
dialect into the language of literature, and not only has 
grown common, but promises to become universal ; 
for it is widely employed by many of the best modern 
writers, and, in particular, occurs frequently in the later 
poems of Tennyson. 

The English Strong Conjugation. 

140. The variations and modifications that took 
place within the strong conjugation naturally involve 
the discussion of its preterites and past participles, not 
as distinguished from those of the weak conjugation, 
but as distinguished from each other. It therefore 
becomes necessary to introduce at this point much in 
regard to those parts of the verbs which strictly would 
find place elsewhere ; for, in the history of the strong 
conjugation, numerous anomalies have arisen in con- 
sequence of the confusing of preterite and participial 
forms. 

141. The Anglo-Saxon strong verbs may be divided 
into six classes, 1 the origin of the distinctions between 

1 For convenience of reference, and of comparison with other works, the 
following statement is made in reference to the classes as here given: Class I. 
corresponds to the first five strong conjugations in Grimm's system of the 
Teutonic strong conjugation; Class II., to Grimm's twelfth conjugation; Class 
III., to his tenth and eleventh conjugations; Class IV., to his seventh conjuga- 
tion; Class V., to his eighth conjugation; and Class VI., to his ninth. Fur- 
ther, Class I., as here given, includes all the verbs that in Anglo-Saxon 
showed traces of primitive reduplication; the other classes, those that ex- 
hibit vowel-change proper. To Class II. belong all verbs that have the radi- 
cal vowel a before a double consonant; to Class III., all that have the radical 
vowel a before a single consonant; to Class IV., all that have the radical 
vowel a usually before a single consonant, lengthened into o in the preterite; 
to Class V., all that have i as the radical vowel; and to Class VI., all that 
have « as the radical vowel. 



The Verb, 



. 263 



which it is not necessary to enter into here. Under 
each of these classes will be given those verbs origi- 
nally belonging to it, which have been preserved with 
their strong inflections in Modern English. The prin- 
cipal parts given are, 1, the infinitive ; 2 and 3 the 
preterite singular (excluding the second person) and 
the preterite plural ■ 4, the passive participle. Mod- 
ern English forms are placed under the corresponding 
Anglo-Saxon ; and, when one of the former has not 
been directly derived from the one under which it 
falls, the fact is marked by enclosing the modern word 
in parentheses. 

142. Class I. — To this in Anglo-Saxon belonged 
about fifty verbs. The vowel of both numbers of the 
preterite was either e or ed. Of these verbs nine re- 
main to Modern English, and the preterite has e as its 
vowel, in one case ea. 



I. 


beat, 


beatan ; 
beat 


beot, 
beat 


beoton ; 


beaten. 
beaten 


2. 


blow, 


blawan ; 
blow 


bleow, 
blew 


bleowon ; 


blawen. 
blown 


3- 


crow, 


era wan ; 


creow, 


creowon ; 


era wen. 






crow 


crew 




(crowed) 


4- 


fall, 


feallan ; 
fall 


feoll, 
fell 


feollon ; 


feallen. 
fallen 


5- 
6. 


grow, 
hang (II.), 


growan ; 
grow 

hangan ; / 

hon ; ) 

hang 


greow, 
grew 

heng, 

{hung) 


greowon ; 
hengon ; 


growen. 
grown 

hangen. 
(hung) 


7- 


hold, 


healdan ; 
hold 


heold, 
held 


heoldon ; 


healden. 
(held) holden t 


8. 


know, 


cnawan ; 
know 


cneow, 
k?iew 


cneowon ; 


cnawen. 
know 71 


9- 


throw, 


prawan ; 

throw 


preow, 
threw 


preowon ; 


prawen. 
thrown 



264 



English Language. 



Of this class it will be noticed, that, in Modern 
English, hang has passed from it to Class II. and it, 
in turn, has gained draw and slay from Class IV., and 
fly from Class VI. 

143. Class II. — Of this class there were some 
eighty verbs in Anglo-Saxon. The vowel of the pret- 
erite singular was a or ea, in a few cases <z ; that of 
the plural, invariably u. The Modern English preterite, 
when derived from the singular, has invariably a ; when 
from the plural, u or ou ; in two cases it has <?. 
Twenty-three of the original verbs survive : — 



1. bind, 

2. climb, 

3. cling, 

4. drink, 

5. fight, 

6. find, 

7- "gin, 

8. grind, 

9. ring, 

10. run, 

11. shrink, 

12. sing, 



bindan ; 
bind 

climban ; 

climb 
clingan ; 

cling 

drincan ; 
drink 

feohtan ; 
fight 

findan ; 
find 

-ginnan ; 
-gin 

grindan ; 

grind 
ringan ; 

ring 

rinnan ; 
{run) 

scrincan ; 
shrink 

singan : 



•band, bimdon ; 
bound 

clamb, clumbon ; 
clomb 



clang, 

dranc, 
drank 

feaht, 



fand, 

-gan, 

-gan, 

grand, 

rang, 

rang 

ran, 
ran 



clungon ; 
clung 

druncon ; 
drunk 

fuhton ; 
fotight 

fun don ; 
found 

-gunnon ; 
-gun 

grundon ; 
ground 

rungon ; 
rung 

runnon : 



bunden. 
bound 

clumben. 
clomb ? 

clungen. 
clung 

druncen. 
drunk 

fohten. 
fought 

funden. 
found 

-gunnen. 
-gun 

grunden. 
ground 

rungen. 
rung 

runnen. 
rtm 



scranc, scruncon ; scruncen. 
shrank shrunk shrunk 



sang, 
sans: 



sungon ; 
sung 



sungen. 







The Verb 


1 


2t 


J 3- 


slingan, 


slingan ; 


slang, 


slungon ; 


slungen. 






sling 




slung 


slung 


14. 


slink, 


slincan ; 


slanc, 


sluncon ; 


sluncen. 






slink 




slunk 


slunk 


*5- 


spin, 


spinnan ; 


span, 


spunnon ; 


spunnen. 






spin 




spun 


spun. 


16. 


spring, 


springan ; 


sprang, 


sprungon ; 


sprungen. 






spring 


sprang 


sprung 


sprung 


17. 


sting, 


stingan ; 


stang, 


stungon ; 


stungen. 






sting 




stung 


stung 


18. 


stink, 


stincan ; 


stanc, 


stuncon ; 


stuncen. 






stink 


stank 


stunk 


stunk 


19. 


swim, 


swimman ; 


swam, 


swummon ; 


swummen. 






swim 


swam 


swum 


swum 


20. 


swing, 


swingan ; 


swang, 


swungon ; 


swungen. 






swing 




swung 


swung 


21. 


win, 


winnan ; 


wan, 


wunnon ; 


wunnen. 






win 




won 


won 


22. 


wind, 


windan ; 


wand, 


wundon ; 


wunden. 






wind 




wound 


wound 


23- 


wring, 


wringan ; 


wrang, 


wrungon ; 


wrangen. 






wring 




wrung 


wrung 



Of these verbs, clingan, in Anglo-Saxon, does not 
have its modern meaning, but signifies ' to wither.' 
To this class have been added hang, from Class I., and 
strike, from Class V. In literary English, hang had for 
its preterite heng, the representative of the original 
form, until the fifteenth century, and perhaps later; 
but in the sixteenth this had usually given way to hung. 

144. Class III. — To this belonged, in Anglo-Saxon, 
about forty verbs. These had, as the vowel of the 
preterite singular ce, ea, or a, and, correspondingly in 
the plural, ce, ed, or a. Sixteen of these verbs are still 
found in Modern English : — 



266 



English Language. 



I. bear, 


beran ; 


baer, baeron ; 


boren. 




bear 


(bore) 


bor 11(e) 


2. bid, 


biddan ; 


baed, bsedon ; 


beden. 




bid 


bade (bid) 


(bidden) 


3. break, 


brecan ; 


braec, brsecon; 


brecen, ) 
brocen. ) 




break 


(broke) 


broken 


4. come, 


cuman ; 


cam, camon ; 


cumen. 




come 


came 


come 


5. eat, 


etan; 


aet, aeton ; 


eten. 




eat 


ate 


eaten, eat 


6. get, 


getan ; 


geat, geaton ; 


geten. 




get 


(got) 


(gotten.got) 


7. give, 


gifan ; 


geaf, geafon ; 


gifen. 




give 


gave 


given 


8. lie, 


licgan ; 


laeg, laegon ; 


legen. 




he 


lay 


lain 


9. see, 


seohan ; ) 
seon; J 


seah, sawon ; 


segen, / 
sen. ) 




see 


saw 


seen 


10. shear, 


sceran ; 


scaer, scaeron ; 


scoren. 




shear 


(shore) 


shorn 


11. sit, 


sittan ; 


saet, sseton ; 


seten. 




sit 


sat 


(sat) 


12. speak, 


specan ; 


spaec, spaecon ; 


specen, ) 
spocen. ) 




speak 


(spoke) 


spoken 


13. steal, 


stelan ; 


stael, stselon ; 


stolen. 




steal 


(stole) 


stolen 


14. tear, 


teran ; 


taer, tseron ; 


toren. 




tear 


(tore) 


toi'n 


15. tread, 


tredan ; 


traed, trsedon ; 


treden. 




tread 


(trod) 


(trodden^ 


16. weave, 


wef an ; 


wasf , waM on ; 


wefen. 




weave 


(wove) 


(woven) 



145. To this class belongs the defective verb quoth, 
found only in the preterite in Modern English. In 
Anglo-Saxon the principal parts were as follows : — 

cweSan, cwjeS, cwsedon, cweden. 



The Verb. 



267 



By the fourteenth century it was rare that any other 
part of this verb beside the preterite was used ; but 
the preterite itself was then very common. It ap- 
peared indifferently with the consonant of the singular 
or of the plural, as quoth or quod ; but the former be- 
came the prevalent form before the end of the Middle 
English period. The compound be-queathe (123) 
has retained the full verbal inflection, but has passed 
entirely over to the weak conjugation. 

146. Class IV. — In this class there were in Anglo- 
Saxon nearly thirty verbs. The vowel for both num- 
bers of the preterite was ; in Modern English it is 
00 or o. Nine of these verbs still remain in our lan- 
guage with the strong inflection : — 

1. draw (I.), dragan ; drog, drogon ; dragen. 







draw 


(drew) 


drawn 


2. 


heave, 


hebban ; 
heave 


hof, hofon ; 
hove 


hafen. 
(hove) 


J- 


(for) sake, 


sacan ; 

-sake 


soc, socon ; 
-sook 


sacen. 
-saken 


4- 


shake, 


scacan ; 
shake 


scoc, scocon ; 
shook 


scacen. 
shaken 


5- 
6. 


slay (I.), 
stand, 


slahan ; 
slean; 
slay 

standan ; 
stand 


sloh, slogon ; 
(slew) 

stod, stodon ; 
stood 


slagen. 
slain 

standen. 
(stood ) 


7- 


swear, 


swerian ; 


swor, sworon ; 


sworen. 






swear 


swore 


sworn 


8. 


take, 


tacan ; 

take 


toe, tocon ; 
took 


tacen. 
taken 


9- 


wake, 


wacan ; 
wake 


woe, wocon ; 

woke 


wacen. 
(woke ?) 



Of these verbs draw and slay have, in Modern Eng- 
lish, passed over to Class I., in the preterite. 



268 



English Language. 



147. Class V. — This class numbered over fifty 
verbs in Anglo-Saxon. The preterite singular had for 
its vowel a ; the plural had u In Modern English the 
vowels of the preterite are a> 0, and /. Fifteen of 
these verbs survive : — 



I. 


(a)bide, 


bidan ; 


bad, bidon ; 


biden. 






-bide 


bode 


{-bided) 


2. 


bite, 


bitan ; 


bat, biton ; 


biten. 






bite 


bit 


bitten 


3- 


chide, 


cidan ; 


cad, cidon ; 


ciden. 






chide 


chid 


chidden 


4- 


cleave (' to adhere ') 


1, clifan ; 


claf, clifon ; 


clifen. 






cleave 


clave 


{cleaved) 


s- 


drive, 


drif an ; 


draf, drif on ; 


drifen. 






drive 


drove 


driven 


6. 


ride, 


ridan ; 


rad, ridon ; 


riden. 






ride 


rode rid 


ridden 


7- 


rise, 


risan ; 


ras, rison ; 


risen. 






rise 


rose 


risen 


8. 


shine, 


scinan ; 


scin, scinon ; 


scinen. 






shine 


shone 


{shone) 


9- 


shrive, 


scrifan ; 


scraf, scrifon ; 


scrifen. 






shrive 


shrove 


shriven 


10. 


slide, 


slidan ; 


slad, slidon ; 


sliden. 






slide 


slid 


slidden 


11. 


smite, 


smitan ; 


smat, smiton ; 


smiten. 






smite 


smote 


smitten 


12. 


stride, 


stridan ; 


strad, stridon ; 


striden. 






stride 


strode 


stridden 


*3- 


strike (II.), 


strican ; 


strac, stricon ; 


stricen. 






strike 


[struck) 


stricken 


14. 


thrive, 


prifan ; 


praf, prif on ; 


prifen. 






thrive 


throve 


thriven 


*5« 


write, 


writan ; 


wrat, writon ; 


writen. 






write 


wrote writ 


written 



Of these verbs, strican, in Anglo-Saxon, meant ' to 
go rapidly ; ■ and the modern meaning of the verb did 



The Verb. 



269 



not belong to it. It has also passed over to Class II., 
in Modern English, in the preterite, though it retains 
sometimes its regular past participle, stricken. 

148. Class VI. — To this class belonged, in Anglo- 
Saxon, about fifty verbs. The preterite in the singu- 
lar had for its vowel ed ; for the plural, u. In Modern 
English the vowel of the preterite is or 00. 



I. 


choose, 




ceosan ; 

choose 


ceas, 


curon ; 

chose 


coren. 
cho(s)en 


2. 


cleave (' to 


split'), 


cleofan ; 
cleave 


cleaf, 


cluf on ; 
clove 


clofen. 
cloven 


3- 


A 




fleogan ; 


fleah, 


flugon ; 


flogen. 








fly 


{flew 


> 


flown 


4- 


freeze, 




freosan ; 

freeze 


freas, 


fruron ; 

froze 


froren. 
fro(z)en 


5- 


seethe, 




seogan ; 
seethe 


seas, 


sudon ; 
sod 


soden. 
sodden 


6. 


shoot, 




sceotan ; 
shoot 


sceat, 


scuton ; 
shot 


scoten. 
shot 



Of these words, fly, flew, has gone over to the first 
class in Modern English, its forms apparently having 
been confounded with the preterite and past participle 
of flowan, ' to flow.' Shoot may also be regarded as a 
contract verb of the weak conjugation, the old strong 
participle shotten, having gone out of use. 

149. The above lists embrace seventy-seven verbs. 
They are all which are now in use that can trace their 
origin to a known Anglo-Saxon strong verb ; and some 
of them, as has already been shown, have developed 
weak forms along with the strong ones. But, in addi- 
tion to these, ten other verbs have been pointed out 
as now having the strong inflection, which were either 



270 English Language, 

not known to the Anglo-Saxon at all, or were known 
only as weak verbs. It is no easy matter to state defi- 
nitely the time of their introduction into the language, 
or of their transition from the weak to the strong con- 
jugation ; and all assertions are liable to be proved 
mistaken as the earlier literature is more closely 
studied. But, apparently, it may be said with a fair 
degree of certainty, XhsX fling, stick, and strive belong 
to the Early English period ; hide, spit, and wear, to 
the Middle English ; and dig, stave, string, and the 
technical sea-term reeve, belong to Modern English. 
Within the strong conjugation, they may be assigned 
to the following classes : — 

II. 

dig. 
fling, 
stick, 
string. 

150. The strong verbs now existing in the language 
consequently number eighty-seven. Necessarily, this 
assertion is made of the simple verbs only, and does 
not refer to their compounds, which follow the conju- 
gation of the simple verb. These compounds, how- 
ever, are few in number ; as compared with the earliest 
period of the speech, the loss in them has been enor- 
mous. The word fret, it is to be added, is inflected 
weak ; though the simple verb eat, of which it is a 
compound, belongs to the strong conjugation : and 
foi'sake is a single instance also of the preservation of 
a compound while the simple verb sake has perished. 



III. 


V. 


wear. 


hide. 


spit. 


reeve. 




stave. 




strive. 



The Verb. 271 

There are, besides, a few verbs, such as bide and gin, 
that are rarely to be met with, except as compounded. 

151. An examination of the inflection of verbs of 
the strong conjugation, as given above, brings to light 
two facts which it is important to comprehend clearly ; 
for they serve to explain much that may seem peculiar 
in the later history of the verbs. These facts may be 
stated as follows : — 

1 . That, with the exception of the verbs belonging to 
Classes I. and IV., there is in Anglo-Saxon a differ- 
ence of vowel, or of vowel-sound, between the pret- 
erite singular and the preterite plural. The verbs in 
which this vowel variation appeared constitute more 
than three-fourths of the strong verbs now existing in 
our tongue. 

2. That, in the second and fifth classes, — embracing 
about one-half of the Anglo-Saxon strong verbs that 
have been transmitted to Modern English, — the 
vowel of the preterite plural and of the past participle 
is precisely the same. We wrote, for illustration, 
would be, in Anglo-Saxon, we writon ; written would 
be writen ; and the only essential difference between 
the two forms would be the vowels o and e of the end- 
ings. In one instance in the second class, and in all 
the verbs of the sixth class, the vowel of the preterite 
plural was u 9 and that of the participle o; but as, in 
Early and Middle English, o, in such cases, was used 
for u, even here a distinction ceased to exist. 

152. From these two facts have resulted in Modern 
English varying forms for the preterite and passive 



272 English Language. 

participle, the origin of which can now easily be traced. 
Let us take, for illustration, the history of the preterite 
of the Anglo-Saxon verb singan, ' to sing ; ' for the 
comprehension of the development of one verb in- 
volves that of all. 

153. In the earliest period of English, when one 
wished to say, I sang, or sung, he used the form ic 
sang : when he wished to say, we sang, or sung, he 
used the expression we sungon. The plural preterite 
differed from the singular by having a termination on, 
and by change of vowel. After the break-up of Anglo- 
Saxon, the first thing to be affected was this ending on. 
In accordance with the principle already so often 
stated, the vowel was weakened into e, and sungon 
became sungen. But, along with this weakening of 
the vowel, there was also a tendency to drop the final 
n ; and sungen became sunge. The next steps were 
to drop the final e in pronunciation, and then in writ- 
ing ; and we have, in consequence, for the preterite 
plural, the form sung. Hence, there remained as a 
result two forms for the preterite, — one for the singular 
and one for the plural, — differing from each other only 
by a single letter, and that letter a vowel. This state- 
ment requires a slight modification. The second per- 
son singular of the preterite had the same vowel as 
the plural. Sangest, for illustration, would, in Anglo- 
Saxon, be sunge. The use of this person, much more 
common than at present, helped to increase the con- 
fusion that soon arose in the usage of an uneducated 
people. It was inevitable that a distinction seem- 



The Verb. 273 

ingly arbitrary, and serving no useful purpose, should 
break down ; and this was what happened. For a 
while, doubtless, the distinction was kept up by indi- 
viduals long after it had disappeared from the language 
of the great mass of men. To say I sang and we 
sung was, probably, vaguely felt by many, and loudly 
maintained by some, to be the only correct usage ; 
even after, in the ordinary speech, men had become 
accustomed to say indifferently, I sang or we sang, or 
I sung or we sung. In particular verbs, also, the dis- 
tinction lasted much later than it did in others. An 
examination of the best manuscripts of Chaucer's 
poetry leaves little doubt, that, with him, gan was regu- 
larly the singular of the preterite, gumien, gunne, or 
gun, the plural ; and the same statement may be 
made as to his use of schal, i shall/ and schullen or 
schulle. But even in his time the distinction between 
the preterite singular and plural of most verbs had 
broken down generally, and the forms originally be- 
longing to one number were used for both ; and, not 
unfrequently, both forms were used indifferently and 
interchangeably. Hence arose a double set of preter- 
ite forms, such as drank and drunk, began and begun, 
rang and rung, spra?7g and sprung, ?-ode and rid, 
wrote and writ, which have been transmitted to Mod- 
ern English. 

154. These double preterites were far more numer- 
ous in the Middle English period than now. The 
tendency of the language has been to steadily reduce 
their number; and many forms, which, even in the 



274 English Language. 

early period of Modern English, were in good use, 
have now disappeared altogether, or are heard only in 
the language of low life. Ben Jonson, in his grammar, 
gives a long list of verbs that had two different forms 
for the preterite in his time ; and, in a large proportion 
of them, one form is now obsolete or antiquated. 
Especially is this true of Class V., in which, according 
to him, bide has for preterite bode or bid, chide has 
chode or chid, drive has drove or drive, rise has rose 
or ris, slide has slode or slid, smite has smote or sniit, 
stride has strode or strid, and write has wrote or writ ; 
and in Class II. he gives to climb the two preterites 
clomb and climb; to fling, the preterites flang and 
flung; to swing, the preterites swang and swung; to 
wring, the preterites wrang and wrung, and, in like 
manner, double forms to many others. 

155. In all these instances it is observed that one 
form comes from the singular of the preterite, the 
other frorn. the plural. In the majority of instances 
only one form continues now in use ; but there are 
still a number of verbs which retain the two, — one 
derived from the original singular of the preterite, the 
other from the original plural. They all belong to the 
second or fifth classes of the strong verbs ; and, in 
the following list, the Anglo-Saxon original forms are 
added in parentheses. 

156. The verbs now possessing double forms for the 
preterite are the following : — 





The Verb. 


2/ 




Original Singular. 


Original Plural. 


drink, 


drank (dranc), 


drunk (drunc-ou). 


(be)gin, 


-gan (gan), 


-gun (gtinn-on). 


ring, 


rang (rang), 


rung (rung-on). 


shrink, 


shrank (scranc), 


shrunk (scrunc-on). 


sing, 


sang (sang), 


sung (stmg-on). 


spring, 


sprang (sprang), 


sprung (sprung-on), 


stink, 


stank (stanc), 


stunk (stunc-on). 


swim, 


swam (swam), 


swum (swumm-on). 


ride, 


rode (rdd), 


rid (rid-on). 


write, 


wrote (wrdt), 


writ (writ-on). 



To these must be added the word bid, from biddan 
of Class III., whose forms have been confounded in 
later English with those of bidan, i to abide/ of Class 
V. ; thus giving the following preterites : — 



bid, 



Original Singular. 

bad(e) (bad, III.), 
(bdd, V.), 



Original Plural, 
bid (bid-on, V.). 



This list includes only those forms in present use, 
and even some of these may be said to belong to the 
language of poetry rather than of prose. 

157. But most of the strong verbs have now but 
one form of the preterite. The following lists show 
the forms that have been derived from the singular, 
and those from the plural, in the classes already 
mentioned. 

1. Forms derived from the singular of the pret- 
erite : — 



V. 








(a)bide, 


-bode (bdd). 


smite, 


smote (smdt). 


cleave, 


clave (cldf). 


shrive, 


shrove (sera/), 



2^6: 



English Language. 



drive, 


drove (drdf). 


stride, 


strode (strdd) 


rise, 


rose (rds). 


II. 




shine, 


shone [scan). 


run, 


ran (ran). 


thrive, 


throve (prdf). 







In eailier English it is also to be added, in regard 
to these verbs of Class V., that the vowel a was more 
common than o, the latter gradually supplanting it in 
these verbs in the Middle English, and in many cases 
even earlier. But drave lasted down to the sixteenth 
century, and is still used in poetry ; while other forms 
with the vowel a survive in the dialects. 

2. Forms derived from the plural of the pret- 
erite : — 



II. 




V. 


I. bind, 


bound (bund-on). 


1. bite, bit (bit-on). 


2. cling, 


clung (clung-on). 


2. chide, chid (cid-o?i). 


3- % ht > 


fought (fiiht-on). 


3. slide, slid (slid-on). 


4- grind, 


ground (grund-on). 




5- slin S> 


slung (slung-on). 




6. slink, 


slunk (slunc-011). 




7. spin, 


spun (spunn-on). 




8. sting, 


stung (stung-on). 




9. swing, 


swung (swicng-on). 


Clomb, the preterite of 


10. win, 


won (wunn-on). 


climb, may have come either 


11. wind, 


wound (wund-on). 


from the Anglo-Saxon pret- 


12. wring, 


wrung (wrung-on). 


erite singular or plural. 



It is hardly necessary to add that other forms 
derived from the singular are also occasionally to be 
met with, especially in Middle English and in the 
earlier period of Modern English. Span and swang, 
and slank and chodc, and others, are by no means 



The Verb. 217 

infrequent in our past literature, and may be revived 
in the future. 

158. It is evident, that in the verbs of the second 
class, wherever only one form has been selected, the 
Modern English has preferred the plural. The only 
exception, indeed, is in the case of run ; and this was 
doubtless due to the fact that the vowel u had made 
its way into the present, where it had no right : and 
so, instead of ri?i, that form became run ; and, to dis- 
tinguish the preterite from the present, the vowel of the 
singular was chosen. On the other hand, the verbs of 
the fifth class have, in most cases, chosen the singular 
forms. This may seem the result purely of accident ; 
but, while partly so, it was far from being so entirely. 
The choice of the plural in verbs of Class II. was 
largely owing to the influence of the vowel of the pas- 
sive participle, which, with them, was either the same 
as the plural of the preterite, or came to be the same. 
When u was the vowel of the preterite plural, either 
u or o was the vowel of the participle, as can easily 
be seen by reference to the examples. In Early and 
Middle English, o became the representative, frequent- 
ly, of the original it and 0. Songen and wcnnen, for 
illustration, might be either the plural of the pret- 
erite or the passive participle ; and, as in both 
forms, the dropping of the termination took place at 
about the same time, song(e) and won(7ie) became 
the shortened form of both these parts of the verb ; 
and when, at a still later period, the u took the place 
in pronunciation, and also in writing (with the excep- 



278 English Language. 

tion of won), of the o, it entered alike into both these 
parts of the verb. But in the weak conjugation the 
preterite and past participles had now assumed precisely 
the same form ; and the influence of this inflection 
was insensibly brought to bear upon these verbs, so as 
to make them conform in this respect to the practice 
of the vast majority of verbs in the language. The 
plural was, therefore, naturally chosen, when the selec- 
tion was limited to one form. This similarity of form 
of the preterite and past participle has led some 
grammarians to assert that the forms now exhibited 
by the preterite in these verbs are intrusions of the 
passive participle ; but this is a mistake. They are 
simply in their origin preterite plurals, which the simi- 
larity of the participle aided to establish over the pret- 
erite singular as the exclusive form in Modern Eng- 
lish. 

159. Why, then, did not this become the practice 
in the verbs of Class V. ? Why was it that here the 
singular form has been preferred in Modern English? 
This is due to the fact, that, in verbs of this class, the 
original participle either dropped out of the language 
entirely, or retained its termination en. Shinen and 
clival, the participles of shine and cleave, early dis- 
appeared. Abidden, from abide, lasted to a later 
period \ but it never could be called common. On 
the other hand, most of these verbs retained their full 
participial forms, such as risen, driven, smitten, and 
the like ; and, in consequence, there was not a con- 
stant resemblance between them and the shortened 



The Verb. 279 

form of the preterite, such as drive and ris and s mit 
The latter, in consequence, gave way generally to 
the singular form. In the three cases of bite, chide, 
and slide, in which the plural form has been the one 
adopted in Modern English, the influence of the 
participle must be regarded as having decided the 
matter; for in each of them bit, chid, and slid have 
been common shortened forms of that part of the 
verb. 

160. But there are, nevertheless, a number of verbs 
in which there has been an intrusion of the vowel of 
the participle into the preterite : these belong to Class 
III. (144). In Anglo-Saxon, verbs of this class 
whose stem ended in a liquid belonged to a group 
which had o or u as the vowel of the participle ; as 
cuman, ' to come,' had for the passive participle 
cumen, and beran, ' to bear,' had bo7-en. Of the two, 
the vowel o was much the more common. But there 
was another group of verbs belonging to this class, 
whose stem ended in a consonant not a liquid, and 
with these the vowel of the passive participle was 
almost always e; thus etan, 'to eat,' and tredan, 'to 
tread/ had for participles eten and treden. But, even 
in the Anglo-Saxon period, the o of the participles of 
the first group sometimes supplanted the e of the 
participles of the second group ; and spocen and 
brocen are more common than specen and brecen, the 
strictly regular forms. This tendency to use o as the 
vowel of the past participle increased after the break- 
up of the Anglo-Saxon inflection \ and from the parti- 



280 



English Language. 



ciple it made its way into the preterite, supplanting 
the older forms in a of verbs belonging to this class. 
There are, consequently, two forms of the preterite of 
these verbs, — one derived from the vowel of the 
original preterite, and the other from the vowel of the 
passive participle. The first of these are the older ; 
but in most cases they have now gone out of use. 
The verbs of this class which have exhibited, or do 
exhibit, these double forms of the preterite, are the 
following : — ■ 

Infinitive. New Preterite. Old Preterite, 

bear, bore, bare, 

break, broke, brake, 

get, got, gat. + 

shear, shore, share, 

speak, spoke, spake, 

steal, stole, stale, 

tear, tore, tare, 

tread, trocl(e), trad, 

weave, wove, wave. 

By a false analogy with these verbs, swear, which 
belongs to Class IV. (146), and whose preterite is, in 
consequence, strictly swore (A.S. swdr, swor-011), took 
to itself another form with a, sware, which is now rarely 
used outside of poetry. The weak verb wear, which, 
on becoming strong, entered this class, developed like- 
wise two preterites, ware and wore. 

161. The other verbs of this class generally follow 
the ancient inflection. Bid, as already mentioned, 
has mixed its forms with those cf bide (Class V.). The 
verb eat may be said to have a peculiar history of its 



The Verb. 281 

own, a long vowel-sound having not only taken the 
place of the original short vowel-sound of the stem 
et in the infinitive and passive participle ; but the 
vowel of the preterite in Modern English is some- 
times long as in ate, sometimes short as in eat: in the 
latter, the barbarous spelling, as not unusual, gives no 
clew to the pronunciation. 

162. The verbs of the first and fourth classes, hav- 
ing the same vowel-sound in the singular and the 
plural of the preterite, have never developed double 
strong forms, with the single exception of swear, which, 
as already mentioned, had given to it the preterite 
sware, through what was, strictly speaking, a blunder. 
In verbs of the sixth class, the o of the preterite can 
have come either from the vowel of the plural or from 
that of the participle ; for in Early and Middle Eng- 
lish the u of the plural had become o, and this was suffi- 
cient to establish the exclusive use of that vowel in the 
preterites of the few verbs now in use that belonged 
to that class. 

163. A few verbs of this sixth class underwent, in 
the Anglo-Saxon period, rhotacism in the preterite 
plural and the passive participle ; that is, changed their 
s into r. Thus the Anglo-Saxon leosan, ' to lose,' had 
for the preterite plural luron instead of luson, and the 
participle loren instead of losen ; and when this verb, 
at a later period, passed over to the weak conjugation, 
it left behind it its participle loi-e?i in the adjective 
lorn, seen more frequently in the compound forlorn. 
There was another verb of this kind which is still in- 



282 English Language. 

fleeted strong, — the word freeze ; but it has given up its 
rhotacism, though a poetic adjective, froren or frore, 
still recalls the form of the original past participle. 

164. The account given of the preterite of the 
strong conjugation has, to a large extent, involved an 
account of the past participle. Still the latter has, in 
some respects, a special history of its own ; but, on 
account of its close alliance in form with the preterite, 
it will be considered next. 

The Past Participle of the Strong Conjuga- 
tion. 

165. The passive participle of strong verbs was 
originally formed in all the Teutonic languages by add- 
ing to the stem the suffix -na with the connective a, 
thus making the termination, exclusive of the case- 
signs, ana. In the Anglo-Saxon the final a of this 
ending had dropped, and the initial a had been weak- 
ened into e. The termination, therefore, in the earli- 
est period of English, was regularly -en, except in a few 
instances when the e was syncopated. 

166. After the Norman conquest the n was fre- 
quently dropped, especially in the South of England. 
Usage on this point was, however, very variable during 
the whole of the Early and Middle English periods ; 
and as a result the form of the passive participle came 
into Modern English with a good deal of variation. 
These diversities can be arranged under the following 
heads, though in a few cases the differences are rather 
orthographical than real, 



The Verb. 28 3 

167. (1.) Some verbs have lost the termination en- 
tirely. This includes nearly all of Class II. (143), 
but none outside of it. Forms like begunnen, rungen, 
sungen, sp rungen, and others of this class, in very few 
cases were in existence at the beginning of Modern 
English. Chaucer occasionally exhibits the full form 
as songen (C. T. 153 1) ; but with him the n is usually 
dropped, and begonne, songe, and spronge, and similar 
forms, are those almost invariably met with. Even 
bounden, drunken, foughten, shrunken, which are the 
only full forms of this class that have been retained in 
Modern English, are almost always used, when used 
at all, as adjectives. Come, of Class III. might, per- 
haps, be properly added to this group ; for in pronun- 
ciation, though not in writing, it has dropped the 
termination entirely. Comen is not uncommon in 
Elizabethan English, being frequently met with in 
Bacon's works ; but it is not often used after the be- 
ginning of the seventeenth century. 

168. (2.) Some verbs have retained the termina- 
tion, though in seme of them the e is syncopated ; 
but this is the only contraction they undergo, as they 
never drop the n. They come from all classes except 
the second (143) and sixth (148), and are about the 
same in number as those belonging to the preceding 
group. The participles fallen, known (I.), given, 
torn (III.), shaken, take?i (IV.), and driven, risen 
(V.), may be instanced as representatives of this group, 
in which the final n never disappears. 

169. (3.) Between these groups stands a third ; 



284 



English Language. 



which has double forms for the past participle, — one 
with the ending n, the other without it. A still further 
distinction might be made in the fact that some words 
drop en entirely, others drop only n ; but this is a dis- 
tinction existing merely on paper, as this final e is never 
sounded. The following is the list of verbs which 
exhibit double forms of the past participle, with the 
classes to which they belong : — 



I. beat, 
II. bind, 
II. drink, 

ii. fight, 

II. shrink, 
III. bid, 
III. break, 
III. eat, 
HI. get, 
III. speak, 
III. steal, 
III. weave, 
III. tread, 
V. bite, 
V. chid, 



beaten, 
beat. 

bounden, 
bound. 

drunken, 
drunk. 

foughten, 
fought. 

shrunken, 
shrunk. 

bidden, 
bid. 

broken, 
broke. 

eaten, 
eat. 

gotten, 
got. 

spoken, 
spoke. 

stolen, 
stole, 
woven, 
wove. 

trodden, 

trod. 

bitten, 

bit. 

chidden, 

chid. 



ridden, ) 
rid. J 

slidden, / 
slid. 

written, 
writ. 



■1 



V. ride, 
V. slide, 
V. write, 
VI- choose, *osen,} 

Cleave, £? } 

VI- I-ze, %£• \ 

VI. shot, «g"* } 

VI. seethe, g^ 



To these may be added the 
originally weak verb hide (Class 
V.), which has the two forms 
hidden and hid for the parti- 
ciple. 



The Verb, 285 

In regard to most of these verbs it is sufficient to 
say that the full forms are now generally preferred, 
outside of those belonging to the second class, which, 
indeed, can now hardly be reckoned as participles. 
But there is no established rule in regard to these 
forms, and the widest diversity of usage has existed, 
and still continues to exist, in respect to many of them. 

170. (4.) A certain number of verbs have been 
mentioned in which the participial forms made their 
way into the preterite. On the other hand, the re- 
verse operation has happened in a number of instances : 
the preterite has made its way into the past participle. 
In some cases it has entirely superseded the regular 
form ; in others, it has taken its place alongside of it. 
The following is the list of verbs in which this transi- 
tion of the preterite into the participle has occurred, 
and is still in use : the older forms, when entirely 
obsolete, are printed in Italic : — 



Infinitive. 


New Passive Participle. 


Old Passive P; 


I. hold, 


held, 


holden. 


II. drink, 


drank, 


drunk. 


III. sit, 


sat, 


sitten, I 
sit. ) 


IV. stand, 


stood, 


stonden. 


IV. wake, 


woke, 


waken. 


V. (a)bide, 


(a)bode, 


{a) bidden, 


V. shine, 


shone, 


shinen. 



The participles waken and shinen disappeared 
early ; but the weak form of waked was and is so 
generally used, that the use of woke as a participle 



286 English Language. 

may even now be regarded as uncommon. It was in 
the sixteenth century that most of these transitions 
were effected ; in particular, it was then that held, 
sat, stood, and abode were established as passive parti- 
ciples. Drank and drunk are both in use at the 
present time, and the choice varies with the writer. 

171. These words, however, are only the relics of 
what was once a general movement, which has been 
completely arrested. In the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries the use of the preterite for the past parti- 
ciple was common in a large number of verbs in 
which it is no longer seen. The literature of the 
Elizabethan period, and even later, abounds in in- 
stances of the use of drove for driven, fell for fallen, 
rode for ridden, rose for risen, forsook for forsaken, 
shook for shaken, smote for smitten, strove for striven, 
took for taken, wrote for written, and doubtless 
numerous other like forms. In some cases these 
preterites used for the regular past participle lasted 
down to a late period. Wrote, for illustration, is very 
common for written in the literature of the eighteenth 
century ; and at the present day these forms occasion- 
ally appear. But the language at the present time is 
averse to their use, and, with the exception of those 
mentioned in the preceding section, is disposed to 
exclude the employment of them wholly. 

172. Two other participial forms are worthy of atten- 
tion. The verb bear has two forms, born and borne, 
and in ordinary usage limits the former to the sense 
of ' brought forth.' The difference is, in its origin, a 



The Verb, 287 

difference of spelling; and the distinction is unknown 
to the periods before Modern English. The verb 
strike, also, which has passed from the fifth class (147) 
to the second (143), has usually struck for both the 
preterite and the past participle ; but it sometimes 
makes use of the original participial form stricken, 
and along with this it developed a form strucken, by 
adding the participial ending en to the preterite. 

173. The origin of y, as prefixed to the past par- 
ticiple, will be given in the account of the past parti- 
ciple of the weak conjugation (201). 

174. This concludes the discussion of the principal 
parts of the strong conjugation. It will be seen from 
this, that, since the beginning of the Modern English 
period, that conjugation has lost none of the verbs 
belonging to it ; though there have been times when 
it seemed as if weak forms of all would become uni- 
versal. The tendency of the language at present is 
unquestionably to prefer the strong form wherever 
there is any choice ; and it is not impossible that 
many verbs now inflected weak will, in the future, 
receive back their old inflection. The use of clomb 
in poetry is becoming more and more common ; and 
dive (originally of Class VI.) frequently assumes, in 
the language of common life, its ancient preterite 
dove, and this, in consequence, occasionally makes its 
way into the written speech. Cases of this kind may 
be always expected to occur. The English dialects 
also have retained the strong form in some cases 
where the literary language has assumed the weak, 



288 English Language, 

and at any moment the original inflection may be 
taken up by the latter from the former. These dia- 
lects, indeed, have often developed strong forms in 
verbs that are strictly weak, as has already been seen 
in the case of show, shew, which is found both in 
England and this country. So, also, squeeze has a 
strong preterite squoze in the dialects of some parts 
of England ; and this can be heard, likewise, in 
various parts of the United States in the speech of the 
uneducated. Sporadic forms like these crop up here 
and there constantly in our literature ; and their occur- 
rence renders it unsafe to assert that particular forms 
are never employed. It can only be said that they 
are not the ones usually employed. 

The Weak Conjugation. 

175. It has already been pointed out that the dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of the weak conjugation was, 
that it added a syllable to form the preterite ; that this 
syllable was nothing more than a verbal form corre- 
sponding to the reduplicated perfect of the English 
verb do, so that to illustrate an ancient usage by a 
modern hypothetical formation, instead of employ- 
ing an expression equivalent to / did love, the preterite 
was denoted by an expression equivalent to love-did- 
I ; that this appended verb was so cut down, and so 
closely united with the leading verb, that it was only 
in the dual and plural numbers of the Gothic preterite 
that its full form was seen. In Anglo : Saxon it was 
represented in the first person of the preterite singular 



The Verb. 289 

by de 9 as bernan, 'to burn/ had for its past tense 
bernde, ' burned ; ' and in general terms it may be 
that the said Anglo- Saxon weak verb formed its pret- 
erite by adding de. 

176. Its passive participle was also distinguished 
from that of the strong conjugation by the fact that 
the latter ended in en ; while in the former the termi- 
nation was d, or occasionally /. 

177. But the Teutonic weak verb had originally a 
connective which entered between the stem and the 
termination. This connective in its full form was aja ; 
but this was never actually seen, for, from an early 
period, it was modified in three ways. Either the 
initial a was dropped, and the connective, in conse- 
quence, became ja, vocalized into ia ; or the / was 
dropped, and the two vowels aa, coming together, were 
contracted usually into 6 ; or the final a was dropped, 
leaving the connective aj vocalized into at. Accord- 
ing to the use of these three connectives arose in the 
Teutonic three conjugations of weak verbs, all of 
which are preserved in Gothic and Old High German. 
But in the other early Teutonic tongues the third con- 
jugation above mentioned, the one with the connec- 
tive at, had disappeared. In the Anglo-Saxon the 
two first-named conjugations were still found ; though 
that with the connective 6 was showing, in some 
respects, signs of decay, the forms belonging to the 
conjugation with the connective ia having taken its 
place in certain parts of the verb. But, even in this 
latter conjugation, the ia was generally weakened to e. 



2go English Language. 

More than this, the connective e was dropped in the 
preterite in the case of all verbs with long stems. The 
verb hyr-an, ' to hear/ with its long stem hyr, formed, 
for example, the preterite hyrde* ' heard/ not /iyr-e-de. 
And, as most of the verbs of this conjugation had the 
vowel of the stem long by nature or by position, there 
were comparatively few that formed their preterites by 
adding ede. 

178. In the English of the Anglo-Saxon period, 
consequently, there may be said to be two conjuga- 
tions of the weak verb, — one forming the preterite by 
adding de, and occasionally ede, to the stem, the other 
by adding ode. The following examples will illustrate 
the differences between them : — 



dem-an, deem, 
der-ia-n, harm, 


dem-de. ) j 
der-e-de. ) 


luf-ia-n, love, 


luf-o-de. II. 



179. These represent the two early weak conjuga- 
tions as distinguished from each other in the preterite ; 
for already in the present tense the connective ia of 
the first conjugation had made its way into the second. 
But within certainly a century and a half after the Nor- 
man conquest the distinction had disappeared. The 
connective o of the second conjugation was generally 
weakened to e, although it is occasionally found even 
as late as the end of the thirteenth century, and per- 
haps still later. A necessary result of this was, that 
verbs of the original Anglo-Saxon second conjugation 
formed their preterites precisely like short-stemmed 



The Verb. 291 

verbs of the first conjugation, both having the connec- 
tive e. To this conformed, in the latter part of the 
Early English period, and still more in the Middle 
English period, many, and perhaps most, of the long- 
stemmed verbs of the first conjugation. Instead of 
demde, for instance, the preterite became demede. 
The connective e, consequently, became, by the begin- 
ning of the Middle English period, the general con- 
nective of the weak preterite, which it has always 
since remained. There were, and still are, exceptions 
to this statement ; but, as a general statement, it is 
sufficiently accurate. 

180. It may therefore be said that ede in the Early 
English period was added to the stem of weak verbs 
to form the preterite ; thus the past tense of thank 
was written and pronounced thankede. But in the 
fourteenth century certainly, and perhaps earlier, the e 
final of ede began to disappear from pronunciation, 
and in the fifteenth century the rule became general 
not to sound it. At the beginning of Modern English 
it had disappeared entirely. Its disuse in pronunciation 
led, likewise, to its disuse in writing or printing, and 
thankede, to continue the same illustration, became 
thanked. This left ed as the addition with which to 
form the preterite in Modern English. It was also 
attended by another consequence. As the past parti- 
ciple usually ended in ed, the dropping of the final e 
of the preterite was followed necessarily by the result 
that the forms for the preterite and past participle 
became the same. 



292 English Language. 

181. But the modification of the preterite did not 
stop here. At the beginning of the Modern English 
period the connective e of the preterite — and the 
statement is likewise true of the past participle — 
began to be dropped in pronunciation. During the 
latter part of the sixteenth, and the earlier part of the 
seventeenth century, usage seems to have varied. In 
some words, or by some persons, the ed was pro- 
nounced as a distinct syllable ; and in other words, 
or by other persons, the e was not sounded, and the d 
was joined directly in pronunciation to the preceding 
syllable, where it necessarily had often the sound of /. 
Thanked of Middle English came, in consequence, in 
Modern English, to have the sound of thankt. The 
tendency to drop the e of ed in pronunciation went on 
steadily increasing, and became general ; though, in 
writing, the full orthographic form was, in the large 
majority of instances, retained. At the . present time 
the ed is rarely heard as a distinct syllable, save in 
verbs ending in d or /, as dread, dreaded, wet, wetted ; 
and in certain participles used as adjectives, such as 
aged and learned, to distinguish them from the same 
words when used strictly as participles. The dropping 
of this e in many cases caused a change of pronun- 
ciation, which, in return, re-acted upon the form of the 
preterite ; but this will be considered later. 

182. De, ede, ode, and, finally, ed, have, accord- 
ingly, been the terminations usually added to form the 
weak preterite during the various periods of the his- 
tory of the language. But, even in Anglo-Saxon, the 



The Verb. 293 

ending de was subjected to an important modifica- 
tion, the influence of which has been widely extended 
in Modern English ; and from it have sprung a num- 
ber of peculiar forms for the preterite, different from 
those regularly formed. As the connective ia weak- 
ened to e was dropped in the vast majority of verbs 
of the first weak conjugation, the result was, that de 
was added directly to the stem, as in the preterite 
demde, given above as an example of the first weak 
conjugation. The effect of this was often to change 
the pronunciation ; and, the spelling conforming to the 
sound, d, after certain consonants, became // and te 
was the syllable added, and not de. In Anglo-Saxon, 
this was regularly the case when the stem of the verb 
ended in e, p, /, x, and sometimes in s, as will be seen 
by the following examples, in which the past participles 
are given, as well as the preterites. It will be noticed 
that c final of the root passes, in the preterite, into h. 



Infinitives. 


Preterites. 


Past Participles. 


secan, seek, 


sohte, 


soht. 


cepan, keep, 


cepte, 


ceped. 


cyssan, kiss, 


cyste, 


cyssed. 


gretan, greet, 


grette, 


greted. 


lixan. shine, 


lixte, 


lixed. 



183. In the Early English, some of these verbs 
resumed the original connective e before the ending, 
in which case the common termination de was again 
employed, as, kepede, kissede, for kepte, kiste ; and 
this, to a certain extent, diminished the number of 
verbs which had in Anglo-Saxon formed their preter- 



294 English Language, 

ites by adding te. But, on the other hand, during the 
Middle English period their numbers were largely 
swelled by other agencies which were in operation. 
The dropping of the final e of ede, both in pronunci- 
ation and in writing, it has already been shown, was 
followed by the dropping of the connective e of ed in 
pronunciation, and sometimes in writing ; so that dwas 
added directly to the stem. After certain consonants, 
it assumed the sound of /. In some cases, this sound 
was denoted in the orthography, as it should have 
been in all; but in many other cases it was not. 
One result of this is, that a large number of verbs 
exist in Modern English which have their preterites 
ending in ed in writing, but which, in speaking, are 
almost invariably sounded as if they ended in /. It is 
hardly necessary to observe that it is the spoken lan- 
guage only that has any vitality ; and a spelling of the 
written tongue that does not represent the sounds of 
the spoken tongue is essentially unscientific, not to 
say barbarous. Another result of this is, that, in Mod- 
ern English, a number of double forms for the preter- 
ites and past participles have been developed, differ- 
ing from each other, in some cases, only in spelling, 
and not at all in pronunciation ; and, when differing 
in pronunciation, they differ only in the sound of final 
d or /. They usually occur in words ending in /, //, n, 
ft, sh, and words ending in the sound of s. The fol- 
lowing list will furnish some of the more common 
illustrations : — 



The Verb. 



295 



spell, 

pen, 

learn, 

dip, 

fix. 



spelled, ) 

spelt. ) 

penned, \ 
pent, 
learned 
learnt, 

dipped, ) 

dipt. » 

fixed, 1 

fixt. J 



1 



spoil, 
bless, 
curse, 



spoiled, ) 

spoilt. ) 

blessed, 

blest. 

cursed, 

curst. 



sed, ) 
L S 
-d, / 

t. ) 



There are many double forms, like these, to be 
found at various periods in our literature ; but, in gen- 
eral, it is true that the ending in t, when the word is 
so pronounced, is found much oftener in the early- 
printed literature of Modern English than in that 
which appears at the present time. 

184. The dropping of the final e of the termination 
de or te, had, likewise, necessarily the effect of produ- 
cing a contracted form for the preterite, in the case of 
verbs whose stems ended in d or /, and, as a conse- 
quence, a number of verbs exist in Modern English 
which undergo no change of form in their principal 
parts. The precise history of these verbs can be clear- 
ly understood by a comparison of the changes which 
the Anglo-Saxon conjugation underwent in these par- 
ticulars in the case of two, — sprcedan, ' to spread/ and 



settan, ' to set.' 






Infinitives. 


Preterites. 


Past Participles 


sprabdan, 
settan, 


spraedde, 
sette, 


speeded, 
setted, ) 
set. ) 



296 English Language, 

When the e final disappeared in the fifteenth cen- 
tury from the preterite of such verbs, the second d or /, 
being now entirely unnecessary, was also dropped; 
and as, by that time, the infinitive had dropped its 
termination an weakened into en, and the present 
most of its personal endings, the forms of the infini- 
tive, of the present, and of the preterite came, in conse- 
quence, to be precisely alike. To this, the past par- 
ticiple also early conformed, showing, even in the 
Anglo-Saxon period, a decided leaning toward con- 
traction, as witnessed above in the case of set, found 
alongside of setted. The verb, as a result of these 
various changes, and droppings of the terminations, 
exhibited the same form throughout. But the ten- 
dency to bring about this result was not limited to the 
verbs of the kind which has just been mentioned. 
Words were brought also into this class which did not 
belong to the Anglo-Saxon, but came from the Norse 
or the Norman-French ; and words which in Anglo- 
Saxon added ode to form the preterite, and not simply 
de, were in like manner made to conform to this 
inflection. But after many verbs had thus been 
stripped of their original endings, and been reduced 
to one unvarying form in their principal parts, a re- 
action set in. In the Middle English period began 
the practice of adding the regular termination ed to 
these contract forms, and this gathered strength as 
time went on. In some instances this has been wholly 
successful. The verb start, for illustration, which 
during much of the Middle English period had the 



The Verb. 



297 



preterite and past participle start, adopted the fuller 
form started, which has now become the only one. 
In other cases, contract and full forms of the preterite 
came into use, and have since been retained side by 
side. In a few instances only have the contract forms 
become the exclusive ones. The general present prac- 
tice of the language in regard to these verbs will now 
be exhibited. 

185. (a.) The following are those which have only 
contract forms in the preterite and the past participle, 
and therefore have all the principal parts the same : — - 



1. rid. 


8. cost. 


15. put. 


2. shed. 


9. cut. 


16. set. 


3. shred. 


10. dight (poetic). 


17. shut. 


4. spread. 


11. hit. 


18. spit. 


5. (be)stead. 


12. hurt. 


19. thrust 


6. burst. 


13. hight (poetic). 




7. cast. 


14. let. 





186. (£.) The following are those which have double 
forms for the preterite and past participles : — 



1. bet, 

2. knit, 

3. quit, 

4. slit, 

5. split, 



betted, ) 
bet ) 


6. sweat, 


knitted, ) 
knit. ) 


7. wet, 


quitted, 1 
quit. ) 


8. whet, 


slitted, ) 
slit. ) 


9. wont, 


splitted, 1 
split. ) 





sweated, 

sweat. 

wetted, 

wet. 

whetted, 

whet. 

wonted, 

wont. 



187. Whether the full or the contract form shall be 



298 English Language. 

employed is merely a question of usage, and of usage 
that has varied at different periods. In the above list 
it is largely a matter of individual preference which 
shall be adopted. The number, indeed, might be 
largely extended, if the various forms that have ap- 
peared at various times in the writings of good authors 
were to be included. The contracted form wed for 
wedded is not infrequent. In the early period of 
Modern English, lift for lifted is sometimes met with, 
and other unusual forms, either full or contract, are 
occasionally to be found in our literature. On the 
other hand, it is not at all uncommon to find, especially 
in the earlier authors of the Modern English period, 
forms like casted, and hurted, and bursted; and they 
are liable, in the very nature of things, to appear at 
any time, in obedience to that desire to bring about 
uniformity of inflection, which plays so important a 
part in the development of language. 

188. Somewhat resembling these in their history is 
another series of contract forms for the preterite, which 
arose in certain verbs whose stems ended in nd. The 
conjugation of the Anglo-Saxon verb sendan, ' to send/ 
will show the original forms : — 

sendan, sende, sended. 

In such verbs as these, the dropping of the e of the 
preterite had the effect of changing the final d into i : 
sende, in consequence, became sent It is not impos- 
sible, indeed, that this termination came into the pret- 
erite from the past participle, as contract forms for 
that part, such as sent for sended, appeared not in- 



The Verb. 299 

frequently in the Anglo-Saxon period. Here, again, 
the same course of proceeding took place as in the 
verbs whose history has just been given. After the 
contracted forms for the preterite and past participle 
had become established, new and strictly regular forms 
were developed in some cases by the adding of ed. 
The following list includes the verbs that have this 
contract form : — 



1. bend, 


bent. 


5. send, 


sent. 


2. blend, 


blent. 


6. spend, 


spent 


3. lend, 


lent. 


7. (wend, 


went) 


4. rend, 


rent. 







Of these, bend and blend have often the fuller forms 
bended and blended ; while went has become the pret- 
erite of the verb go, and wend has developed, to take 
its place, the regular form wended (266). 

189. After this same method, several verbs not 
having the termination of the stem in nd, but in Id 
and rd, have likewise developed a contracted preterite 
and past participle, and, along with it, a full form. 
The following is the list : — 

— * sn ».« £*} 

These are to be distinguished from such preterites 
as learned and leamt, dwelled and dwelt, mixed and 
mix t, passed and past (183) ; for in these latter, while 
there is an actual difference in the spelling, there is 
usually no additional syllable heard in the pronuncia- 
tion. 



300 



English Language, 



i go. All of the irregular weak verbs that have so far 
been mentioned, not only retain the same vowel 
through all their principal parts ; they retain also the 
same length of that vowel. We now come to the dis- 
cussion of certain verbs of which the vowel of the 
stem was either shortened in the preterite and the 
past participle, or was changed entirely. 

191. This first class, which shortened the stem- 
vowel, is a development of the Early and Middle 
English periods ; for no such shortening was known to 
the Anglo-Saxon. It seems to have been largely due to 
the influence of the short vowel of the preterite plural 
in certain strong verbs, which plural had become, with 
them, the usual form for both numbers ; as, chide, c/iid, 
shoot, shot This class may be conveniently subdivided 
into two. The first will embrace the verbs whose 
stems ended in d or /, especially the former. These 
dropped the de or te of the termination, like the class 
to which spread and set belonged (184) ; but they 
differed from them in having the vowel of the pret- 
erite shorter than that of the infinitive or present. The 
list embraces the following verbs, to which the Anglo- 
Saxon primitives are subjoined :< — 



1. bleed, 

blMan 

2. breed, 

bredan 

3. feed, 
fed an 

4. lead, 

Ictdan 



bled. 
bledde 


5« 


meet, 
mitan 


met. 
mHte 


bred. 
bredde 


6. 


read, 

redan 


read. 

redde 


fed. 

fedde 
led. 

Icedde. 


7- 
8. 


speed, 
sp£dan 

(be)tide, 
tidian 


sped. 

spedde 
-tid. 

tidde. 



The Verb. 301 

It will be noticed that read, in Modern English, 
actually shortens the vowel of the preterite and past 
participle, although no change takes place in the spell- 
ing. To the list may also be added heat (A.-S., h&tan, 
hcbtte), which in Elizabethan English had a preterite 
and participle het, along with the full form, heated; and 
this is still heard in the language of low life. To it 
may also be added the two following verbs, with their 
double forms for the preterite and participle : — 

Hide, hid, etymologically should also be reckoned 
here; but, as explained in sect. 134, it seems best to 
regard it as a strong verb. Betide sometimes exhibits 
the full regular form be tided, as also speed in certain 
senses has speeded. 

Plead is of Romance origin ; while light represents 
two Anglo-Saxon verbs, lyhtan, ' to shine/ and lihtan, 
' to make lighter,' and ' to alight.' 

192. The second subdivision embraces those verbs 
whose stem ends in a vowel, in the liquids, /, m, n, and 
r, and in p,f, and s. The list embraces the following 
words, of which flee, creep, leap, sleep, sweep, weep, and 
lose, belonged, in Anglo-Saxon, to the strong conjuga- 
tion ; while kneel is not a form known to the original 
tongue. To the others the Anglo-Saxon forms are 
added. 



1. flee, 


fled. 


3. deal, 


dealt. 


2. shoe, 


shod. 


diUan 


ddlde 


sceoan 


sceode 


4. feel, 


felt. 






/clan 


felde 



302 English Langtmge. 



5- 


kneel, 


knelt. 


6. 


dream, 


dreamt. 




dreman 


dremde 


7- 


lean, 


leant. 




hlinian 


hlinode 


8. 


mean, 


meant. 




mdknan 


mcciide 


9- 


hear, 


heard. 




hyran 


hyrde 


10. 


creep, 


crept, 



n. keep, 


kept. 


cepan 


cepte 


12. leap, 


lept. 


13. sleep, 


slept. 


14. sweep, 


swept 


15. weep, 


wept. 


16. lose, 


lost. 



To these may be added three verbs which now 
change a v of the infinitive into /in the preterite and 
participle : of these, cleave was originally strong : — 

cleave, cleft. leave, left. (be)reave, -reft. 

fait) hefde, reafian, red/ode. 



In a large number of these words, Middle and Mod- 
ern English have developed full forms alongside of 
the contracted ones, and some of the former are even 
more common than the latter. The verbs which have 
had, or still have, these double forms, are deal, kneel, 
dream, lean, leap, cleave, and (be)reave, which exhibit, 
either generally or occasionally, the regular forms 
dealed, kneeled, dreamed, leaned, leaped, cleaved, and 
{be)reaved. Full, regular forms of some of the others 
likewise occur, but not often. 

193. The vowel- variation that took place in the 
above verbs was, as has been said, unknown to the 
earliest period of the language. At that time, nearly 
every one of the above-mentioned verbs that existed 
in it and was inflected weak had a long vowel- in all 
the principal parts, as the primitive forms show dis- 



The Verb, 



303 



tinctly. In Anglo-Saxon there were, however, a num- 
ber of verbs of the weak conjugation, in which there 
was a real variation of vowel in the preterite. A few 
of these have disappeared from the tongue altogether, 
others have become perfectly regular; but, of those 
that have continued to show this vowel-variation, the 
following list gives the principal parts as found both in 
Anglo-Saxon and Modern English. It is to be noticed, 
that in the former, a c or g final of the stem became, 
in the preterite, h. 



194. 












Infinitives. 


Preterites. 


Past Part. 


Infinitives. 


Preterites. 


Past Part. 


bringan, 


brohte, 


broht. 


bring, 


brought, 


brought. 


bycgan, 


bohte, 


boht. 


buy, 


bought, 


bought. 


secan, 


sohte, 


soht. 


seek, 


sought, 


sought. 


seilan, 


sealde, 


seald. 


sell, 


sold, 


sold. 


tellan, 


tealde, 


teald. 


tell, 


told, 


told. 


pen can, think 


pohte, 


poht. 


think, 


thought, 


thought. 


pyncan, seem. 


puhte, 


punt. 


(me)thinks, (me) thought. 


wyrcan, 


worhte, 


worht. 


work, 


wrought, 


wrought. 



Of these verbs, work has developed also a regular 
form, worked ; and, although this did not come into 
common use before the eighteenth century, it is now 
much more widely employed than the earlier wrought. 
On the other hand, tceca?i, 'to teach,' which had no 
variation of the vowel-sound in Anglo-Saxon, its pret- 
erite being tcehte, has developed a variation in later 
periods in the forms teach, taught; while catch, a word 
that did not make its appearance in the language until 
after the Norman conquest, has, in like manner, formed 
a preterite, caught. Reach (A.-S., rcecan, rtehte) and 



304 English Language. 

stretch (A.-S., streccan, streahte) are also verbs, which, 
in Old and Middle English, had their preterites raught 
and straught; but during the Modern English period 
they have been almost invariably inflected reached and 
stretched, though the earlier forms sometimes occur. 
At various periods, also, some other of these verbs 
have been inflected regularly. Especially is this true 
of catch, teach, and tell, and the compound beseech, 
all of which occasionally exhibit the forms catched, 
te ached, telled, and beseeched ; but the earlier preter- 
ites have always been preferred. 

195. The form fraught is also to be reckoned with 
the foregoing. When employed at all, it is almost in- 
variably used as the past participle of freight ; but it 
belongs, in its origin, to a verb spelled in precisely 
the same way, which was an allied form of the verb 
freight, and probably the older of the two, but which 
has now gone out of use. Fraught may therefore be 
described as the obsolescent participle of an obsolete 
verb. 

196. Three verbs have undergone contractions pe- 
culiar to themselves. These are have, in which the 
existing preterite has been cut down from the Old 
English havede ; make, in which made has been simi- 
larly cut down from the Old English makede ; and 
clothe. The Anglo-Saxon inflection of the last-named 
was clabian, cldftode, cldbod ; but in Early and Middle 
English the contracted forms for the preterite and past 
participle, cladde and clad, were used along with the 
fuller forms, and the two have lasted down to our 
time. 



The Verb. 305 

197. With the statement that certain verbs ending 
in y change this y to i in the preterite, as say, said, 
pay, paid, — which is nothing more than an ortho- 
graphic variation, — the history of all the anomalous 
forms of the weak verbs now existing has been given. 
Anomalous forms not mentioned here can, indeed, 
occasionally be found ; but they are all explainable 
according to the analogy of the contracted forms that 
have been described. In general, also, the history of 
the past participle of the weak verb is, since the fif- 
teenth century, the same as the history of the preter- 
ite, when the dropping of the final e by the latter 
brought about in them both identity of form. The 
few additional explanations in its history, not involved 
in the history of the preterite just given, will now be 
stated. 

PAST PARTICIPLE OF THE WEAK CONJUGATION. 

198. The past participle of weak verbs was formed 
in the primitive Indo-European by adding to the stem 
the suffix ta. Of this the consonant appeared in the 
early Teutonic tongues as th, t, or d. In Anglo-Saxon 
it was d ; and, as the vowel of the suffix had dis- 
appeared, it was d only that was added. This was 
joined on directly to the connective o of the second 
weak conjugation, as luf-o-d, t loved ; ' or to the con- 
nective e of the first weak conjugation, as dcm-e-d, 
'deemed' (178). But sometimes this connective e 
was dropped, in which case d often became /. 

199. When the distinction between the two weak 



306 English Language. 

conjugations disappeared in the Early English period, 
e became, in general, the connective for all verbs, and 
d or t was usually added to it, though sometimes they 
were added directly to the stem. The dropping of the 
final e of the ending ede of the preterite, in the Middle 
English period, had, necessarily, the direct effect of 
bringing about a perfect similarity of form between 
the preterite and past participle ; and, as has already 
been shown, the latter was subjected to precisely the 
same changes which befell the former. To this there 
is one slight exception. 

200. Either after the analogy of verbs whose past 
participle is precisely the same in form as the present, 
as hit, hurt, or because they were made to resemble 
their Latin primitives, a number of verbs in the Mid- 
dle English period did not always add d to form the 
past participle ; as consummate (Lat. consummat-us) 
for consummated, create (Lat. creat-us) for created, 
pollute (Lat. pohut-us) for polluted. These forms 
without final d usually belong to words that are 
derived from Latin verbs of the first conjugation ; but 
they are not limited to them. The usage extended 
down to the Modern English period, and can hardly 
be said to have been abandoned before the end of the 
seventeenth century. Certain writers are remarkable 
for their fondness for such forms. As a general use, 
they are employed in an adjectival sense ; but even 
then their participial character is plainly apparent. 
The participle situate for situated, common in legal 
phraseology, is a survival of this usage. 



The Verb. 307 

201. The Anglo-Saxon prefix ge has had also a 
special history of its own in connection with the past 
participle both of the weak and of the strong conju- 
gation. In the earliest period of the language it was 
affixed indifferently to nouns, adjectives, pronouns, 
adverbs, and verbs. There was not, in the case of the 
verb, any disposition originally to restrict it to the past 
participle; but this became, in Early and Middle 
English, the prevailing, though not absolutely exclusive, 
practice. But the prefix sometimes suffered a change 
of form before the Conquest, which change, after the 
Conquest, became habitual. For ge, either y or i is 
found from the twelfth century on : and in the manu- 
scripts these two letters frequently appear as capitals, 
Y or /. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and even 
the fifteenth centuries, this y or i was widely used, but 
more particularly in the speech of the South. Parti- 
cipial forms like ilent, ymaked, isworn, ygo, 'gone/ 
ybe, ' been/ are exceedingly common in the literature 
of the fourteenth century. And not only was this y or 
i applied indifferently to verbs of the weak or of the 
strong conjugation, it was applied with equal indiffer- 
ence to foreign or native words. The Northern dialect, 
however, never made use of this prefix to any extent, 
hardly even at all, except in the writers who directly 
imitated the language of Chaucer ; and it seems as if 
the influence of that dialect of the language had in 
this respect prevailed over the usage of the South and 
the Midland. In the fifteenth century the employ- 
ment of y or i with the participle began to be given 



308 English Language. 

up, and in the sixteenth century it practically disap- 
peared. It occasionally made its appearance much 
later, and is even seen at times in poetry to this day, 
especially in burlesque, or in imitation of the archaic 
style. 

Number and Person. 

202. As regards the three primitive numbers, the 
Gothic was the only one of the Teutonic languages that 
retained the dual of the verb ; but, even in that, it 
was confined to the first and second persons. At the 
time that language was committed to writing, the third 
had disappeared ; and, in order to say that " they two " 
had done any thing, the plural form had to be used. 
The English verb, through all the stages of its history, 
knows only of the singular and plural numbers : no 
trace of a dual appears in its earliest monuments. 

203. The commonly received theory as to the origin 
of the personal endings is, that the personal pronoun, 
as the subject of a verb, was originally placed after it, 
and not before it as now ; just as if we, instead of say- 
ing I hate, ye hate, should say, hate I, hate ye, and so 
on for the other persons. These pronouns, appended 
to the stem of the verb, gradually united with it so as 
to form one word ; as even in Early English, for illus- 
tration, thinkest thou or sayest thou often appears as 
one word, thinkestow, sets tow. Thus joined to the 
verb, they came at last to be regarded as an inseparable 
part of it, as really belonging to it, and were then used 
to form the inflection of the tense ; and, as the per- 



The Verb. 309 

sonal pronoun originally appended to each person to 
denote the subject was different, the endings were 
necessarily in all cases different at first. When these 
pronouns, however, had become so thoroughly united 
with the verb as to form one word, the recollection 
of their original pronominal character passed away : 
they were simply looked upon as an integral part 
of the inflection of the verb, and not as separate 
words or syllables denoting the subject. After this 
result had been reached, a personal pronoun was 
frequently put before the verb as its subject ; and 
this naturally became more and more common as 
the sense of the original pronominal nature of the 
personal ending became fainter and fainter. When 
it had become a common practice to employ the 
personal pronoun as the subject of the verb, and 
usually preceding it, the necessity of an ending to 
denote the person was gone : that was denoted by the 
personal pronoun which was the subject. The value 
of distinct terminations for the persons was accord- 
ingly destroyed. Under such circumstances, it was 
inevitable that in some cases the terminations should 
be confounded, and, if much confounded, that many 
of them in course of time should disappear. This has 
been fully exemplified in the history of the Teutonic 
languages, and of our own in particular. In Gothic 
there is a distinct termination for each of the three 
persons of the plural of the present indicative, — m 
for the first person, th for the second, and nd for the 
third; but in Anglo-Saxon this diversity of endings 



310 English Language. 

had been given up : the endings of the first and 
third persons had been entirely abandoned, and the 
ending of the second person, th, had become the 
common ending of the three. In the Anglo-Saxon 
subjunctive there was a distinction of form between 
the singular and the plural ; but the three persons of 
the singular had all the same termination, as had like- 
wise the three persons of the plural the same ; in this 
respect differing again from the older tongue, the 
Gothic, which in this mood still preserved the dis- 
tinction of persons by the endings. In the preterite 
plural the Anglo-Saxon had only one termination for 
the three persons, which termination was originally 
that of the third person, and had been extended to 
the other two. But barren of these endings as is our 
earliest speech when compared with the Gothic, it is 
rich when compared with what we have to-day. The 
history of the tenses will show the steady loss in this 
respect that has overtaken the inflection. 

TENSES OF THE VERB. 

204. The English, like all the Teutonic tongues, has 
but two simple tenses, — the present and the preterite. 
About them as centres have been developed verbal 
phrases which express the ideas and relations con- 
veyed by the fuller forms to be found in other lan- 
guages. The use of these two tenses is far more 
limited in Modern English than it was in the ancient 
speech ; for the present then generally expressed also 
the ideas for which we now use, not merely the future, 



The Verb. 311 

but the future-perfect; while the preterite denoted 
what is now conveyed by the imperfect, the perfect, 
and the pluperfect. These forms have, moreover, 
undergone changes so various, that it will be necessary 
to consider each one of the two simple tenses by 
itself. 

THE PRESENT TENSE, INDICATIVE AND SUBJUNCTIVE. 

205. The following paradigms of the strong verb 
singan, 'to sing,' and the weak verb lujian, 'to love,' 
will show the inflection of the present indicative and 
subjunctive in the Anglo-Saxon period. To them is 
also appended the indicative singular of the verb 
ridan, 'to ride,' both in the full and also the contract 
forms, which are often found in verbs whose stems 
end in d and /, and even s. 

206. 





Sing. 


Indicative. Subjunctive. 


Indicative. 


Subjunctive. 


I. 


ic 


sing-e, 


sing-e, 


luf-ie (ige) 


, luf-ie, 


2. 


pu 


sing-e-st, 


sing-e, 


luf-a-st, 


luf-ie, 


3- 


he 
PL 


sing-e-S. 


sing-e. 


luf-a-S, 


luf-ie. 


1. 


we' 


) 








2. 


ge 


[• sing-a-S. 


sing-en. 


luf-ia-8. 


luf-ie-n 


3- 


hi 


Sing. 












i. ic rid 


-e, 


rid-e 








2. pu rid 


-e-st, 


rist, 








3. he rid 


-e-$. 


rit. 





In these paradigms it will be seen that the stem of 
singan is sing; the connective is a weakened to e in 



312 English Language, 

the singular of the indicative and in both numbers of 
the subjunctive ; and the personal endings, so far as 
they have been preserved, are st of the second, and 
ft of the third person singular, 8 of the plural indica- 
tive, and 11 of the plural subjunctive. Most verbs of 
the first weak conjugation do not differ here from the 
strong verb in their inflection. In the second weak 
conjugation it will be noticed that the connective o 
has been abandoned in this tense, and its place taken 
by the connective ia of the first conjugation (177), 
which, however, is only seen pure in the plural 
indicative. 

207. This is the common inflection in the Anglo- 
Saxon, as it is exhibited in the classical dialect, the 
West-Saxon. But, after the Norman conquest, the 
present tense of the verb presented marked differences 
of form in the three great dialects of the English 
speech that arose and developed literatures of their 
own during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 
According to each of these, the verb singe (n) would 
exhibit the following forms in this tense ; and what is 
true of it is true also of verbs of the weak conjuga- 
tion. 

Sing. Southern. Midland (East). Northern. 

1st Form. 2d Form. 

i. sing-e, sing-e, sing, sing-e(s), 

2. sing-est, sing-est, sing-es, sing-es, 

3. sing-eth. sing-eth. sing-es. sing-es. 

PI. 

1. 2. 3. sing-eth. sing-en. sing. sing-es. 

208. It is evident at a glance that the Southern 



The Verb, 313 

forms are much nearer the classic Anglo-Saxon than 
either of the others ; and that the Midland are nearer 
the Southern than they are to the Northern. On the 
other hand, it is to be remarked that the Northern 
forms in s go back to a period before the Conquest, 
although the dearth of the Northumbrian literature, 
and the uncertainty attending the date of composition 
of the little that has been preserved, make positive 
statements hazardous as to the time of the transition 
of the final 8 into s, or the extent of usage of the lat- 
ter. It will be observed, however, that there are two 
sets of Northern forms, one of which, though going 
back to the thirteenth century, is far nearer Modern 
English than either of those found in the Midland or 
the South. In general, it may be said of these two, 
that, when the verb has for its subject a personal pro- 
noun directly preceding it, it uses the first form : but 
in other cases the forms in s are usually though not 
invariably found. In consequence, in the Northern 
English of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they 
think and men think would ordinarily be represented 
by thai thynk and men thynkes ; and this is still a 
peculiarity of the Scotch dialect. 

209. It is the Midland form, however, though largely 
influenced by the Northern, that has been the ruling 
one in Modern English. The connective a or ia of 
the Anglo-Saxon had in Early English become, in 
all cases, e ; and this had reduced the inflection of all 
verbs, whether weak or strong, to one form so far as 
that was concerned. As regards the first person, which 



314 English Language. 

in the earliest period had dropped the personal ending, 
the connective e, which in consequence had become 
the termination, disappeared also from the verb in the 
Middle English. In this, the Northern dialect pre- 
ceded the Midland, and, doubtless, largely influenced 
it. This ending e really disappeared from all verbs : 
but it was retained in the spelling of many, though 
never sounded in pronunciation, as in / love ; and this 
has continued the practice down to the present time. 
The Northern dialect also added s at times to the first 
person, probably from a false analogy with the other 
persons, which all had this ending. This occasionally 
appears in English literature as late as the sixteenth 
century, though in many cases it is hard to tell whether 
the termination was due to design or to typographical 
errors. The colloquial expressions, / says, thinks I to 
myself, and others, are modern representatives of this 
peculiarity of the Northern dialect : though it is notice- 
able, that, in nearly all such cases, the present tense is 
the historic present, and is used to recount a fact or 
feeling which is already past ; and the historic present 
is not known to the Anglo-Saxon. 

210. The second person, through all the periods of 
English, outside of the distinctively Northern dialect, 
has invariably ended in st, and there has never been a 
time when the supremacy of this termination has been 
seriously shaken. During the Elizabethan period the 
Northern form in s is occasionally found alongside of 
it, as can be seen in the following instances : — 



The Verb. 315 

Thou art not thyself ; 
For thou exists on many a thousand grains 
That issue out of dust. 
Shakspeare, Measure for Measitre, act iii. scene I. 

My sharpness thou no less disjoints. 

Jonson, Epigram 58. 

But in such cases the final / was almost always 
dropped, in order to prevent the crowding together of 
numerous consonants, caused by the previous dropping 
of the connective e. In the examples above given, the 
full forms would be exist- est, disjoint-e-st. 

211. The suffix (5 of the third person singular was 
in the Anglo-Saxon period frequently changed into s 
in the North of England ; and, in the works still ex- 
tant in the Northumbrian dialect, forms in ft and s 
stand side by side. By the thirteenth century, however, 
the latter had completely supplanted the former in this 
division of English speech. Outside of it, the ending 
th was regularly employed, not only during the Early- 
English, but during the Middle English period. 
Chaucer almost invariably has the third person singular 
terminating in th, except when he designedly repre- 
sents the dialect of the North. The very few instances 
in which he otherwise has the ending s (as in " The 
Boke of the Duchesse," line 257) are due to the 
necessity of rhyme. 1 But in the sixteenth century 

1 Instances occur, however, in which the forms in s are found where the 
necessity of rhyme cannot be alleged, as in the following extracts from Lang- 
lande's Vision of Piers Plowman Text B. 

And as his loresman leres hym, bileueth and troweth. 

Passus, xii. 183. 
Thus the poete preues that the pecok for his fetheres is reucrenced. 

Passus, xii. 260. 



3 16 English Language, 

the termination in s gradually made its way from 
the Northern dialect into the language of literature, 
and, after the middle of that century, became with each 
succeeding year more common. For about a hun- 
dred years, the forms in s and th lasted side by side 
with apparently little general difference in their usage. 
Books and writers naturally varied. The authorized 
version of the English Bible does not employ the third 
person singular in s ; and in Bacon's works it is com- 
paratively infrequent. Ben Jonson does not even 
mention it in his grammar, although it is of constant 
occurrence in his writing. But, by the middle of the 
seventeenth century, the form in s had become the 
prevailing one, and has since that time become nearly 
the exclusive one. It is the English Bible that has 
kept alive the form in th ; but it is rarely employed 
now, save in poetry and in the solemn style. 

212. The Midland plural en is of uncertain origin, 
though by some it is regarded as being nothing more 
than an intrusion of the subjunctive ending en into 
the indicative. To whatever due, it was a distinctive 
characteristic of the Midland dialect, and showed it- 
self as early as the end of the twelfth century. The 
Southern speech, as has been seen, varied little from 
the classic Anglo-Saxon, and formed its plural in eth ; 
while the Northern, having often changed the #5 into 
as before the Norman conquest, adopted after that 
event the form es or s exclusively, or dropped the ter- 
mination altogether. These three terminations of the 
plural lasted side by side for centuries ; and, though 



The Verb. 3 1 7 

strictly denoting different dialects, they were to some 
extent interchanged, and there are but few Early Eng- 
lish and even Middle English manuscripts in which at 
least two forms are not represented, though one is 
naturally much more common than the other. It is 
from the form in en, however, that the modern English 
has been derived ; though it is scarcely possible not to 
believe that the Northern forms, existing as early as the 
thirteenth century, without any terminations at all, 
should not have had some influence in bringing about 
the result we now see. The n began to be widely 
dropped, even early in the Middle English period ; 
and this was followed by e. This vowel naturally dis- 
appeared first in pronunciation, in this as in so many 
other cases ; and its disuse in pronunciation was gen- 
erally, though not invariably, followed by disuse in 
orthography. The dropping of the n, and the drop- 
ping or retention in the spelling of the e, caused all 
the persons of the plurals to assume the same sound 
and form as the infinitive and the first person of the 
singular. It has already been stated 1 that, according to 
Ben Jonson, this en was employed until the time of 
Henry VIII. "But now," he adds, "whatever is the 
cause, it hath quite grown out of use, and that other 
so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set 
this afoot again ; albeit, to tell you my opinion, I am 
persuaded that the lack hereof, well-considered, will be 
found a great blemish to our tongue." The termina- 
tion en is occasionally found through the whole of the 

1 Page 117. 



318 English Language. 

sixteenth century ; but it is entirely confined to poetry. 
In the latter part of it, it was made somewhat more 
current in a certain class of writings by Spenser, who 
introduced it largely, and in this was followed by a 
number of his admirers and imitators. In the seven- 
teenth century it disappeared even from literature of 
this kind, though it was and is occasionally revived 
as an archaism ; as, for instance, it is employed fre- 
quently in Thomson's " Castle of Indolence." 

213. The plural forms in s and th in reality lasted to 
a much later period than the full forms in en. In the 
prose literature of the sixteenth century they are far 
from uncommon, and they can be found even later, in 
the seventeenth. These statements are especially true 
of the third person : the first and second with these 
endings are far from being frequent, though occasion- 
ally found. But there are more than two hundred 
plurals in s to be found in Shakspeare's plays, though 
these are changed wherever possible in the modern 
editions ; but doth and hath are the only plurals in th 
which he regularly employs. In general, it may be said 
that the plurals in s are common during the whole 
Elizabethan period ; but, by the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, they had pretty generally gone out of 
use, The language of low life, however, retains to 
some extent this form to the present day. 

214. The contracted forms of the present singular, 
exemplified by the paradigm of the Anglo-Saxon verb 
ridan (206), were very common in the earliest period 
of our speech, much more common, indeed, than the 



The Verb. 319 

fuller forms. They were, however, confined to verbs 
whose stem ended in d, /, or s. Through the whole of 
the Early and of the Middle English period they are 
constantly to be met with in the third person ; as rit 
from rideth, sit from sitteth, rist from riseth, glit from 
glideth, stant from standeth. By the beginning of the 
Modern English period, the full forms had generally, 
taken their place ; or perhaps it would be better to 
say they were displaced by the form in s. The verb 
fist, meaning 'please/ still continues to show in the 
modern language the contracted form list, along with 
the full form listeth. 

215. It is hardly necessary to say, that, in all the 
early periods of the language, there are many variations 
from the forms here given. The connective e is often 
syncopated ; it is replaced often by y or i ; the th of 
the endings frequently appears as /or d ; and numer- 
ous other variations could be mentioned which need 
here no more than a general reference, as they have 
had no influence upon the forms existing in the modern 
speech. 

216. The adoption of the ending m by the indica- 
tive necessarily caused its plural to assume the same 
form as that of the subjunctive. The history of the 
one is therefore the history of the other. The disap- 
pearance of the n from both took place at the same 
time, as did also the disappearance of the e when it 
occurred at all. It is only in the second and third 
persons of the singular that the subjunctive forms differ 
at all from those of the indicative ; and it is mainly 



320 English Language, 

owing to these two moods assuming the same forms, 
that the distinct shades of thought once expressed by 
the subjunctive, as contrasted with the indicative, have 
practically disappeared. To denote these the language 
is now obliged to resort to other methods, the discus- 
sion of which belongs to syntax exclusively. 

THE PRETERITE INDICATIVE AND SUBJUNCTIVE. 

217. It is the form of the preterite which distin- 
guishes a verb of the weak conjugation from one of the 
strong : it is therefore desirable to give full forms of 
both. Of the Anglo-Saxon strong verbs, the inflec- 
tion of the preterite of singan, 'to sing/ and tacan, 
' to take/ will be given ; of the weak, the preterites 
of deman, ' to judge/ and /ujian, c to love.' 

Sing. Indicative. Subjunctive. Indicative. Subjunctive. 



I. ic 


sang, 


sung-e, 


toe, 


toc-e, 


2. pn 


sung-e, 


sung-e, 


toc-e, 


toc-e, 


3. he 


sang. 


sung-e. 


toe. 


toc-e. 


PI. 










1. we 


) 








2. ge 


> sung-on. 


sung-en. 


toc-on. 


toc-ei 


3. hi 


J 









218. The history of the modern forms of the pret- 
erite has been largely given in the account of the 
weak and strong conjugations. But, in addition to 
what has already been said, there are three things to 
be especially noted in the Anglo-Saxon inflection : — 

1. The personal endings have entirely disappeared 
from the first and third persons of the singular. 



The Verb. 321 

2. The termination of the second person singular 
of the indicative is not the usual st, but e. 

3. In the preterite of singan, the vowel of the sec- 
ond person singular of the indicative is different from 
that of the first and third persons of the same number ; 
but it is precisely the same as the vowel of the plural 
indicative, and both numbers of the subjunctive. 

The first two statements were true of all strong 
verbs : the first part of the third was true of about 
four-fifths of them. 

219. These paradigms should be compared with 
those of the weak verbs, which follow : — 

Sing. Indicative. Subjunctive. Indicative. Subjunctive. 

1. ic dem-de, dem-de, luf-o-de, luf-ode, 

2. pu dem-dest, dem-de, luf-o-dest, luf-o-de, 

3. he dem-de. dem-de. luf-o-de. luf-o-de. 

p:. 

1. we \ 

2. ge > dem-don. dem-den. luf-o-don. luf-o-den. 

3. hi ) 

220. As the history of the subjunctive is here, as in 
the present tense, involved in that of the indicative, it 
may be disregarded ; and the preterite indicative of 
the four verbs may be placed side by side, as they 
appeared in Early English, with the changes, whatever 
they are, that have already been described in the 
account of the conjugations : — 

Sing. 

i. sang, took, demede, lovede, 

2. sung(e), took(e), demedest, lovedest, 

3. sang. took. demede. lovede. 
PI. 

1, 2. 3. sunge(n). tooke(n). demede(n). lovede(n). 



322 English Language. 

221. For the strong verbs these are a theoretically- 
correct inflection, rather than the ones invariably em- 
ployed ; for, even in the Early English period, the 
vowels of the singular and plural were confounded 
(153). By the fourteenth century, the main distinc- 
tion between the singular and the plural in the case 
of strong verbs was, that the latter added e or en to 
the singular : the vowel difference was frequently dis- 
regarded. In the second person singular, the tendency 
toward uniformity began to make itself felt in the 
latter part of the fourteenth century ; and the est or st 
of the weak conjugation was, in consequence, substi- 
tuted for the e of the strong, so that sunge, for illustra- 
tion, became sang(e)st or sung{e)st. In the fifteenth 
century this became the established practice. The 
dropping of the final en of the plural resulted, as has 
already been shown (153), in causing the two num- 
bers to have precisely the same form as soon as there 
ceased to be any variation of vowel. 

222. In the case of the weak verbs, the final n was 
frequently dropped, even as early as the twelfth cen- 
tury • and this practice became more and more common 
in the centuries which followed. By the beginning of 
the Middle English period it was the usual, though not 
invariable, practice in the Midland dialect. At that 
time, also, the final e which remained after the drop- 
ping of the n was more often neglected than retained 
in the pronunciation ; and in the fifteenth century this e 
disappeared entirely, leaving the forms as they are now 
seen. In this stripping from the preterite plural the 



The Verb. 323 

termination en, the Northern dialect had, as usual, taken 
the lead. As early as the thirteenth century, it not 
merely showed occasional instances of such forms as 
loved and demed, instead of lovede(ii) and demede(ii) : 
they were even then the regular rule. 

223. Besides these two original tenses, English has 
had from the beginning, or has developed, certain 
verb-phrases which correspond in power and use to 
the tenses found in other languages of the Indo- 
European family. The primitive Indo-European had 
itself five tenses ; and of these, the imperfect, the 
future, and the aorist, were not found in any of the 
earliest Teutonic tongues. Their places, however, 
have all been supplied by compound forms, which it 
will be best to consider under the titles usually given 
them in English grammars. 

THE FUTURE TENSE. 

224. As the Anglo-Saxon had no future tense, the 
present was usually employed to express the relation 
denoted by it. This was a peculiarity shared by our 
speech with all the Teutonic languages ; and in all of 
them it continues to exist to the present day. Phrases 
like ' To-morrow is Sunday/ ' I am going to the city 
next week/ and numerous others, are common in 
every period of our language and in every great 
writer of our literature. But Modern English does not 
use the present for the future by any means as com- 
monly as do several of the other Teutonic languages, 
in particular the Modern Hi.^h German. 



324 English Language. 

225. Bat, even in the Anglo-Saxon period, the ne- 
cessity for more precise and definite expression was 
beginning to be felt. The verbs sceal, ' I am obliged/ 
6 1 ought,' and wyle, ' I wish,' ( I have a mind to/ are, 
even at that early time, occasionally found joined to 
the infinitive of another verb to express its future ; 
though, generally, and perhaps it is right to say in- 
variably, there was, in the employment of these, more 
or less reference to the original idea of obligation 
involved in the one, and of inclination or intention in 
the other. Still, in the Northumbrian dialect, the idea 
of simple futurity may be said at times to be distinct- 
ly conveyed, and this certainly became the common 
usage in the Early English period. In the sixteenth 
century a delicate distinction in the use of the auxil- 
iaries shall and will began to be prevalent, and in the 
seventeenth century was firmly established ; though this 
statement is strictly true only of England, and not of 
the English spoken in Scotland or Ireland. Immigra- 
tion has largely broken down this distinction in the 
United States : the Irish do not know it, and the 
Germans do not acquire it. 

FUTURE-PERFECT TENSE. 

226. The future-perfect was the last of the verb- 
phrases denoting the relation of time to be formed. 
As its name denotes, it is a compound of the future 
and of the perfect. It was, consequently, unknown to 
tfoe Afiglo-gaxon ; but it likewise, rarely, if ever, ap- 
peared in Early g$g]isji ; and it is certainly not com- 



The Verb. 325 

mon before Modern English. Its use, indeed, is easily 
avoided, as its place can be, and often still is, taken 
by the compound-perfect, and even sometimes by the 
present. It was the former of these that was usually 
employed during the Middle English period. In fact, 
the same sentence, involving the conception expressed 
by this tense, has been and can be represented in a 
variety of ways, as may be seen in the following illus- 
trations — 

1. Before the cock crow twice, thou deniest me thrice. 

2. Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. 

3. Before the cock has crowed twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. 

4. Before the cock shall crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. 

5. Before the cock has crowed twice, thou shalt have denied 

me thrice. 

6. Before the cock shall have crowed twice, thou shalt have 

denied me thrice. 

The first of these expressions is the one employed 
in Anglo-Saxon : the last is found only in Modern 
English, which, however, employs all the rest. The 
second and third belong to the Early English period ; 
the fourth and fifth, to the Middle English. 

THE PERFECT AND PLUPERFECT. 

227. The perfect and pluperfect are compound 
tenses, formed of the past participle, with the present 
and preterite respectively of either the verb be or have. 
The use of these forms goes back to the earliest period 
of English ; but the simple preterite was then also 
frequently employed to represent the idea expressed 
by both. Originally, the auxiliary have seems to have 



326 English Language. 

been joined only with transitive verbs, and be with 
intransitive ; but the employment of the former has 
as steadily increased as that of the latter has dimin- 
ished during the whole history of our speech. Even 
in Anglo-Saxon, though be was the strictly correct aux- 
iliary with verbs of motion, have can be found joined 
with them also, as, siftftan hie togcedere goegdn hcef- 
don x (Beowulf, line 2631) ; and this has now be- 
come far the more common usage. The verb be was, 
from the beginning, added as an auxiliary to certain 
intransitive verbs denoting motion, rest, or change, 
as, is gone, is set, is grown, and others ; and this has 
maintained itself down to the present time. But so 
steady has been the encroachment of have, that this 
auxiliary may now be regarded as the regular one to 
form the perfect and pluperfect in Modern English. 

228. Besides these forms, there are two other meth- 
ods of inflection that need to be considered, — the one 
commonly called the progressive form, and the other 
the emphatic. 

229. The former of these is compounded of the 
tenses of the verb be and of the present participle of 
another verb, as, / am coming, I was coming. The 
forms as used with the present and the preterite go 
back to the very earliest period of the language, and 
throughout the whole history of our speech there has 
been but little variation in the extent or character of 
their usage. They need, therefore, no remark, save 
that, as compound tenses have been added to the sub- 

1 After they had gone together. 



The Verb. 327 

stantive verb, a full set of corresponding forms with 
the present participle have been successively added, 
as, / shall or will be coming, I have been coming, I 
had been coming, and have gone into general use. 
Even the form for the future-perfect, / shall or will 
have been coming, is recognized in grammars, though 
it is certainly rare in usage. 

230. The history of the so-called emphatic forms is 
far more varied. These are compounded of the pres- 
ent and preterite of the verb do with the infinitive of 
another verb. These forms cannot be said to have 
come into general use until the early part of the fif- 
teenth century ; and they were, as a matter of fact, 
preceded by the infinitive used with the present, but 
more particularly with the preterite of the verb gin, 
which in the i\nglo-Saxon period was rarely seen 
outside of its compounds, especially on-ginnan, and 
in later English is rarely seen save in the compound 
be-gin. The use of the preterite of on-ginnan, with an 
infinitive to express the relation denoted by the pret- 
erite, can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon ; x but, 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the infini- 
tive with the preterite of the simple verb gin had 
become exceedingly common. Gan was strictly used 
as the singular, and gunne(n) or gonne{n) as the 
plural, as can be seen in the following lines from " The 
Canterbury Tales : " — 

It was ten of the clokke he gan (i.e., did) conclude. /. 4434. 
For in a bath thzy go nne (i.e., did) hir faste schetten. /. 12455. 

1 For illustration see the Anglo-Saxon poem of Elene, 11. 303, 306, 311. 



328 English Language. 

The use of the present of gin in this manner was far 
from being as common as that of the preterite gan ; 
and this statement is in the beginning true also of do. 

231. Do itself, at this period, when employed with 
the infinitive, ordinarily meant ' to cause ; ' in which 
usage make has taken its place in Modern English. 
It is from this causative sense that many suppose that 
do and did came at last to be looked upon as having, 
with the infinitive, the force of a present and a pret- 
erite. * He did arrest the man ' would, in the four- 
teenth century, strictly have meant, 'he caused the 
man to be arrested ; ' and the transition from the 
earlier usage to the modern does not seem difficult. 
But it is far more reasonable to attribute the rise of the 
idiom to another method of expression which has 
been common in English during all the periods of its 
history. This is the wide employment of the present 
and preterite of do to supply, in a following clause, the 
place of the principal verb of the preceding one. In 
such a sentence, for instance, as, ' He thinks upon 
this subject as I do,' the transition by which the prin- 
cipal verb would be supplied in many cases after do is 
a natural and an easy one. There is, indeed, but little 
doubt that this is the true origin of the modern form. 
As already stated, this usage of do has been common 
during all periods of English, and is as frequently met 
with in the Anglo-Saxon as in any other. 

232. But, whatever may be the fact as to its origin, 
this so-called emphatic form did not come into gen- 
eral use till the fifteenth century. Scattered instances 



The Verb. 329 

of its employment can be found much earlier, extend- 
ing up even into Anglo-Saxon. In the thirteenth cen- 
tury it was occasionally used ; but neither during that 
nor the following century can it be said to be at all 
common : the form for the preterite made by com- 
pounding gan with the infinitive is in altogether wider 
employment. The great writers who flourished at the 
beginning of the Middle English period — Chaucer, 
Langlande, Govver, and Wycliffe — rarely made use 
of the forms of do to express this relation. 1 But, with 
their immediate successors at the beginning of the fif- 
teenth century, the verb, in this usage, seems to have 
become a favorite ; and from that time the employ- 
ment of it steadily increased. It was in the Eliza- 
bethan era that the use of do and did with the infini- 
tive, in declarative sentences, was most wide-spread. 
In this respect, a great change took place during the 
seventeenth century, so that, in such cases, the aux- 
iliary seemed out of place, unless used for the specific 
purpose of making the expression emphatic. Pope's 
line, published in 1711, — 

While expletives their feeble aid do join, 

1 Do and did, especially the latter, are common in Lydgate's writings. In 
the King's Quhair, by James I., they occur in cantos iii. n, 15; iv. 18, 27; 
vi. 7. On the other hand, the following is the only instance I have observed 
in Langlande, though there may be others: — 

Is in drede to drenche that neuere dede swymme. 

Passus, xii, 169. 

The form is certainly more common in Robert of Gloucester than in either 
Chaucer or Langlande, though these two were nearly a century later in 
time than he. 



330 English Language. 

would have had no special point had it been com- 
posed a century earlier. The language still continues 
ordinarily to reject the do, and to a less extent the 
did, in declarative sentences ; but in negative and 
interrogative sentences the use of these auxiliaries has 
become almost universal. Men no longer say, under 
ordinary circumstances, You go not, but, You do not 
go ; nor, again, do they say, Go you ? but, Do you go ? 

THE IMPERATIVE. 

233. The imperative is found in Anglo-Saxon only 
in the second person ; but it has distinct forms for the 
singular and the plural : that for the latter is precisely 
the same as the plural of the present indicative, as will 
be seen in the following examples of the imperative in 
the verbs already given : — 

Sing. sing. lufa. 

PL singaS. lufiacS. 

J The distinction between the two numbers was very 
generally kept up until the fourteenth century. By 
that time, however, not only was the plural termina- 
tion ath, weakened to eth, sometimes dropped, but the 
two numbers were frequently used interchangeably for 
each other. This, no doubt, was largely due to the 
employment of the pronoun ye for addressing indi- 
viduals (94). As difference of form for the two num- 
bers lost, in consequence, its usefulness, the ending of 
the plural went out of use in the fifteenth century. 

234. For the first and third persons of the impera- 



The Verb. 331 

tive, the subjunctive, followed generally by the per- 
sonal pronouns, was widely employed in Anglo-Saxon ; 
and this usage has lasted down to modern times, and 
is found to this day, at least in poetry. Return we to 
our subject, meaning i Let us return to our subject,' is 
a method of expression which has been employed 
from the earliest period of our speech. The place of 
the first person plural of the imperative was also sup- 
plied in Anglo-Saxon by an infinitive preceded by 
utan, which meant strictly of itself ' let us go.' This 
went wholly out of use within the second century after 
the Norman conquest, and the place of both these 
methods of expression was wholly or mainly supplied 
by the verb let. Though this made its appearance in 
the thirteenth century, it can hardly be called very 
common even in the fourteenth ; but it has now 
become, with an infinitive complement, an ordinary 
method of representing the imperative. 

THE INFINITIVE AND PARTICIPLES. 

235. The infinitive was formed in the primitive Indo- 
European by adding to the verbal stem the suffix ana, 
which in all the early Teutonic languages had dropped 
the final a, and, becoming an, had been appended 
directly to the verb without any connective. Or per- 
haps it may more properly be said that it had dropped 
the initial a also, and that n alone was the sign of the 
infinitive ; thus ' to bind ' is, in the Anglo-Saxon 
period, represented simply by the form bind-a-n, made 
up of the root bind, the connective a. and n the 



332 English Language. 

infinitive sign. In the Old Frisian and the Old Norse 
this final n had also disappeared, and the infinitive 
regularly terminated in a ; and, though the West-Saxon 
dialect clung firmly to an, the Northumbrian showed 
a constant and increasing tendency to follow the 
Frisian and the Norse in giving up n ; thus the infini- 
tive come is in West-Saxon cwnan ; in Northumbrian 
it is both cuman and cuma. 

236. The weakening of the an to en speedily 
became universal after the Conquest ; but, as to the 
retention or abandonment of the n, usage was exceed- 
ingly variable. In fact, it remained for several cen- 
turies ; and the Romance verbs that were brought into 
the language assumed it as naturally as they did the 
inflections of the tenses. It is not to be understood 
that it was anywhere in exclusive use ; for infinitives 
without n were always just as common as the fuller 
form, if not more so. In the fourteenth century the 
disposition to drop this letter became more pro- 
nounced ; in the fifteenth, it had become general ; in 
the sixteenth, the n was used only for poetic effect, or 
as a designed imitation of the archaic style. In all 
cases the final e which was left ceased to be sounded : 
in some cases it was dropped also, in other it was re- 
tained. The latter was more apt to take place when 
the connective was ia rather than a ; as, for instance, 
our word hate comes from hat-ia-n, whereas from 
bind-a-n we have bind, and not binde. But the reten- 
tion of a final e is very arbitrary. 

237. The infinitive is in its nature a verbal noun, 



The Verb. 333 

and in Anglo-Saxon it had a dative case, ending in 
anne, invariably preceded by the preposition to ; as, td 
bindanne. This is frequently called the gerundial 
infinitive. The termination in anne speedily passed, 
after the Conquest, into enne or ene, and at last, drop- 
ping the final e entirely, its form became the same as 
that of the root infinitive, originally terminating in an. 
One effect of this unification of form was, that the 
infinitive in Early English assumed the preposition to 
before it, except when preceded by certain verbs. 
The use of to with the root infinitive (as to sec an, 
Phcenix, line 275) is exceedingly rare in Anglo-Saxon ; 
but this has now become so general, that, with the dis- 
appearance of the ending, the preposition itself has 
almost come to be regarded as a part of the infinitive. 
The gerundial infinitive occasionally preserved a dis- 
tinct form down to the end of the fourteenth century, 
and it was frequently confused with the present parti- 
ciple in ende ; but, before the beginning of the Modern 
English period, it had disappeared from the language, 
though relics of its original use continue to be com- 
mon to this day in such phrases as, " the house to let." 
238. The infinitive of the past to have told, for 
example, is not known to the Anglo-Saxon. It origi- 
nated in the Early English period, apparently toward 
its conclusion, and was frequently employed during the 
Middle English and first part of the Modern English 
periods. Certain of its ancient uses there seems to 
be at present a disposition to confine within narrower 
limits, if not to reject altogether. 



334 English Language. 

239. The history of the past participle has already 
been given in the discussion of the two conjugations. 
In both of these the present participle was formed the 
same way ; that is, by the adding of the suffix ende to 
the radical syllable, as, sing- e tide, ' singing/ During 
the Early English period this suffix appeared fre- 
quently in the dialect of the South as ind(e), in that 
of the North as and(e). In the former it was, as early 
as the twelfth century, often confounded with the 
gerundial infinitive in enne, and also with the verbal 
substantive, which in Anglo-Saxon ended usually in 
ung, but sometimes in ing. Of this last termination, 
which after the Norman conquest became the exclu- 
sive one for the veibal substantive, it finally assumed 
the form in the Southern dialect, and from that it was 
adopted into the Midland. From the fourteenth cen- 
tury ing has, in consequence, been almost the exclu- 
sive form of the present participle, though Northern 
forms, such as glitterand, followand, comand, have 
occasionally been employed. 

240.\The compound participial forms have all been 
of comparatively later formation ; and, indeed, the 
use of any of them is one that can easily be avoided. 
The composition of being with the present participle, 
though perfectly legitimate in theory, has never been 
common in practice. Expressions like being going, 
found in Shakspeare's " Cymbeline " (act iii. scene 6), 
are very rare. On the other hand, the composition of 
being with the past participle, as being loved, is now 
very frequent. These forms did not become generally 



The Verb. 335 

current, however, till the earlier part of the sixteenth 
century; nor even then are they often met with, 
though in this respect there is great difference in 
writers of that time. It was not until the latter half 
of that century that the compounds of having with 
the past participle came much into use. Necessarily 
the compounds with having been were still later. ' Of 
these, the joining of this compound to the past parti- 
ciple seems to have long preceded its joining to the 
present ; that is to say, such participial phrases as 
having been gone were earlier, as even now they are 
much more common, than those represented by hav- 
ing been going. The former were certainly in use in 
the latter half of the sixteenth century. 

PASSIVE FORMATIONS. 

241. The primitive Indo-European tongue had two 
voices, — the active, and the middle or reflexive, which, 
from the very beginning, seems to have assumed the 
functions of the voice we call the passive. The use 
of the reflexive to do the office of the passive is com- 
mon enough in many modern tongues where the 
reflexive pronoun is not united with the verb, nor 
changed at all in form ; and how easy the transition is 
in sense can be shown in our own speech by many 
familiar examples. I persuade myself, for illustration, 
differs very slightly, and in some cases not at all, from 
I am persuaded. It is from the reflexive that the 
passive has been developed in the history of the lan- 
guages of the Indo-European family. 



336 English Language. 

242. But in the Teutonic branch only one of these 
voices can be said to exist. The Gothic, indeed, had 
a middle form, which, with some few exceptions, was 
used in a passive sense ; but it was only found in the 
present tense, and in that the persons were much con- 
founded ; and these and other signs show, that, at the 
time of the translation of the Bible by Ulfilas, the 
form was going out of use. In the other Teutonic 
tongues, occasional traces of a passive, which must 
once have existed, can be found ; but they are few in 
number, and slight in importance. J In all of the 
earlier tongues of this class, the loss of the form was 
supplied by compounding the passive participle with 
the present and preterite of verbs corresponding in 
meaning to our verbs be and become. 

243. In the Anglo-Saxon, the participle was com- 
pounded with the above-named tenses of the verbs 
be on and wesan, both meaning ' to be/ and of weor- 
\an, ' to become ; ' with these the passive was formed. 
The last verb has now gone out of use in our tongue ; 
but it existed as an independent verb down to the 
beginning of the Modern English period, though 
almost always in the phrase woe worth, meaning ' woe 
be.' * In German, the corresponding form werden 
was chosen as the auxiliary to form the passive ; but 
in English it was never common after the Anglo-Saxon 



1 " Thou cursed pen," quoth he, " woe worth the bird thee bare! " 

SuRREYo 

What will worth, what will be the end of this man? 

Latimer, Le?it Sermons (Arber's reprint, p. 120). 



The Verb. 337 

period, though it is sometimes met with. The forma- 
tion of the passive with the present and preterite of 
wesan and beon became early predominant, and 
worthe(ii) gradually went out of use. It, however, 
lasted down to the end of the fourteenth century ; but, 
when used, it had generally, and perhaps always, the 
signification of a future ; and accordingly it is the 
present, and not the preterite, that is employed, as 
in this extract : — 

Chastite withoute charite worth (i.e. shall be) cheyned in helle. 1 

244. The forms of worthe(n), 'to become,' having 
been driven out, those of the substantive verb be were 
the only ones left to express the passive. It was, from 
the nature of things, an office for which it was ill 
calculated ; for, with a verb which expresses a simple 
action, and not a continuous state, the compounding 
of its past participle with the present tense of be did 
not denote something actually taking place, but some- 
thing which had taken place. The field is reaped 
corresponds in form to the man is hated ; but it does 
not correspond in the sense given to the verbal phrase. 
With the latter expression there is continuous action 
implied ; in the former, only a completed result. This 
was a difficulty inherent in the employment of this 
form. To avoid it, the language resorted to expe- 
dients of all kinds : it changed the construction of 
the sentence, it adopted various circumlocutions, and 
at last, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, it 

1 Langlande's Piers Plowman (text B) . — Passus, i. 168. 



338 English Language. 

began the formation of verb-phrases made up of the 
present and preterite of be and the compound passive 
participle. The more detailed history of the passive 
formations in such expressions as the field is being 
reaped has already been given on pp. 132, ff, and need 
not be repeated here. As stated there, the use of 
these forms, like that of the emphatic forms with do 
and did, is confined to the present and the preterite 
tense. 

245. The discussion of the use of the passive 
belongs strictly to syntax, and finds properly no place 
here ; and it is only necessary to repeat what has 
been previously said, that in the freedom in which, 
and in the extent to which, the passive is employed, 
English has gone far beyond other cultivated tongues. 
The use of such expressions as he was given a book, 
he was told the truth, and the like, runs back to 
the Middle English period, and occurs in all the 
great writers of our tongue. 

PRETERITE-PRESENT VERBS. 

246. In all the early Teutonic tongues there were a 
number of strong verbs whose preterite tense had as- 
sumed the signification of a present ; and along with 
this, and perhaps in consequence of it, the original 
present tense had gone entirely out of use. A familiar 
illustration of this assumption by a past tense of a present 
meaning can be seen in the colloquial use in Modern 
English of I have got in the sense of 6 1 have/ ' I pos- 
sess.' The process, however, had not stopped at the 



The Verb. 339 

point indicated by this common expression. When 
the original present had disappeared, and the original 
preterite had assumed entirely the signification of a 
new present, it went on to develop a new past tense. 
This latter was always of the weak conjugation. So, 
in the inflection of the new present tense, the peculi- 
arities of the preterite of the strong conjugation are 
found ; while in the new preterite the inflection is 
the one which regularly characterizes the weak verbs. 

247. In Anglo-Saxon there were twelve of these 
verbs, of which seven continue to exist in some form, 
or to some extent, in Modern English. As each has 
had a history of its own, each will necessarily be 
treated of by itself, so far as the changes which it has 
undergone have not already been treated of in the 
account given of the inflection of the verb in the pre- 
vious pages. Only the forms of the present and the 
preterite indicative are here laid down ; for the sub- 
junctive has nothing about its history different from 
that of other verbs, and the other parts are developed 
in some of these verbs, and absent in others. 

Cunnan. 

248. The verb which has developed this new infini- 
tive originally belonged to the second class of strong 
verbs (143). The following is the Anglo-Saxon in- 
flection : — 



340 



English Language. 



Sing. Present. 


Preterite. 


i. can, can, 


cuSe, could. 


2. cunne, canst, 


cuSest, 


3. can. 


cufie. 


PL 




1, 2, 3. cunnon. 


cuSon. 



249. It will be seen, that, even in the Anglo-Saxon, 
the weak termination of the second person, canst, was 
taking the place of the regular strong form, cunne, 
which is, indeed, looked upon by many as never being 
used save in the subjunctive. Early and Middle Eng- 
lish showed for the preterite couthe and coude, the 
latter of which became the prevailing form in Modern 
English. In the sixteenth century an / was inserted, 
by a false analogy with would and should ; but it has 
never been pronounced. The verb never had a pres- 
ent participle, and its past, cu§, has gone out of use : 
though, as an adjective, it survives in the last syllable 
of un- couth. The infinitive has also disappeared, save 
as it still survives in the independent verb con : it was 
common, however, in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies, in the sense of ' to be able.' 



Durran. 

250. This belonged to the same strong class as the 
preceding. 

Sing. Present. Preterite. 

1. dear, dare, dorste, durst, 

2. dearst, dorsted, 

3. dear. dorste. 
PI. 

I, 2, 3. durron. dorstGn. 






The Verb. 341 

251. In this verb the original form durre, of the 
second person, seems to have been entirely supplanted 
by dearst, even in the Anglo-Saxon period. As the 
existing present is in its origin a preterite, the third 
person of the singular is precisely the same as the 
first ; but the tendency to make it conform to the 
regular inflection, and form its third person in s, has 
been powerful since the beginning of Modern English. 
Both forms, he dare and he dares, have flourished side 
by side during the last three centuries. The verb, 
however, shows a disposition to go over entirely to the 
regular form of the weak conjugation, and even to 
discard the preterite dicrst, which is now far less com- 
mon than formerly. Throughout all its forms it is 
now, indeed, frequently inflected regularly, and has 
developed all the parts of the verbs. 

Sculan. 

252. This belonged to Class III. of the strong verbs 
(i44). 

Sing. Present. Preterite. 

1. sceal, shall, sceolde, shoicld, 

2. scealt, sceoldest, 

3. sceal. sceolde. 
PL 

I. 2. 3. sculon sceoldon. 

253. In Anglo-Saxon, ie seeal meant ordinarily 'I 
am under obligation,' ' I ought,' i I must.' Its trans- 
ition to express the future has already been pointed 
out in the account of that tense. It has remained 



342 English Language. 

throughout its history, comparatively speaking, faithful 
to the Anglo-Saxon form ; and the distinction between 
the vowel of the singular and of the plural was kept up, 
at least by some writers, as late as the fifteenth cen- 
tury. In fact, this verb preserved this distinction after 
most of the other strong preterites had abandoned it ; 
shal and shut {en) being, in the fourteenth century, 
the respective methods usually found of denoting the 
singular and the plural. 

Mdgan. 

254. This also belonged to Class III. of the strong 
verbs (144). 

Sing. Present. Preterite. 

meahte 
1. maeg, may, 



2. 



' J" might 

it, ) meahtest, ) 

, ) mihtest, ) 



mihte, 
meaht, ( meahtest 

miht 



3- ^ mihte 

meahton 



meahte, ) 
ihte. ) 



I. 2. 3. msegon. 



mihton 



m, ) 



The second person singular of the present thou 
might lasted down even to the Middle English period, 
and was not entirely supplanted by mayst until the fif- 
teenth century. 

Motan. 

255. This verb belonged to Class IV. of the strong 
verbs (146). 



The Verb. 343 

Sing. Present. Preterite. 

1. mot, mote, moste, must, 

2. most, mostest, 

3. mot. moste. 
PI. 

1, 2, 3. moton. moston. 

256. This verb has had a history different from most 
of the others, in that its strong preterite-present has 
practically disappeared from Modern English, and its 
new weak preterite has come to assume the force of a 
present ; and, to supply the place of a new preterite to 
must, the language has had recourse to was obliged. 
The original mote is occasionally heard ; but it is 
limited to a few phrases, or to imitation of the archaic 
style. 

Agan. 

257. This has given rise to both a defective and a 
regular weak verb in Modern English. The defective 
verb ought is in its origin the new weak preterite of a 
preterite-present verb ; and its relations can only be 
comprehended clearly by examining the original forms. 
The verb from which it came belonged to Class V. of 
the strong conjugation (147). 



Sing. Present. 




Preterite. 


I. ah, I own, 


possess, 


ahte, ought, 


2. aht, ahst, 




ahtest, 


3. ah. 




ahte. 


PI. 






1. 2. 3. agon. 




ahton. 



258. By comparing the Anglo-Saxon forms with 
those of its class, it will be seen, that, even in the 



344 English Language, 

earliest period, this verb had deviated from the regular 
inflection ; for the vowel of the plural had become the 
same as the singular, and we have agon instead of igon. 
The present forms were in use in the Early English 
period, but were gradually supplanted by the preterite ; 
while from the infinitive the word owe came into use, 
and, after having for a while ought as its preterite, 
developed the regular form owed. This left ought to 
be used exclusively in the sense of duty, obligation, 
fitness, and it is now confined to this one signification 
and tense. 

Witan* 

259. This verb, whose forms have been much mis- 
understood, belonged, also, to Class V. of the strong 
conjugation (147). All difficulties connected with it 
disappear at once on an examination of the original 
form : — 



Sing. Present. 


Preterite. 


I. wit, wot, 


wiste, wist, 


2. wast, 


wistest, 


3. wat. 


wiste. 


PL 




. 2. 3. witon. 


wiston. 



260. The infinitive of this verb to wit still exists in 
Modern English, especially in legal phraseology, used 
in the adverbial sense of ' namely.' Another form of 
this, to weet, is occasionally found in our earlier poetry. 
The present and preterite are still retained, mainly 
through their occurrence in the Bible. The singular 
form wot of the present, and the plural present witen 



The Verb. 345 

or wife, lasted down to the fifteenth century ; but, after 
that, wot was generally used of both numbers. Very 
curiously a singular blunder produced a new verb as the 
supposed present of wiste. It has already been stated 
that the Anglo-Saxon prefix ge was turned, in Early and 
Middle English, into y or i (201). The Anglo-Saxon 
adjective gewis{s), ' certain,' became in Early and Mid- 
dle English the adverb iwis, or ywis, ' certainly.' In 
the sixteenth century this was frequently printed Iwis, 
and, in consequence, the capital /was supposed to be 
the personal pronoun, instead of the modern repre- 
sentative of the prefix ge ; and wis was accordingly 
assumed to be a verb, and regarded as the present of 
wiste. Wis has rarely, if ever, been used outside of 
the phrase I wis, which is, however, by no means un- 
common in poetry, even in our own day. A verb wis, 
or wiss — from Anglo-Saxon wissian, 'to show,' i to 
instruct ' — died out in the Middle English period, and 
has no connection with the present word. There are 
numerous anomalous forms of the verb wit to be 
met with in Modern English, such as, he woteth for he 
wot, the participle wotting for witting (seen in un- 
witting) , and others ; but they are all explainable as 
formed on false analogies with other verbs, or misun- 
derstanding of the character of this one. 

261. To this list of preterite-present verbs of the 
early language that still survive, in some form, to our 
day, may be added one, which, even in its original 
form, presents great irregularities. This is willan, one 
of the auxiliaries now used by us to express the future. 



346 English Language. 

Willan. 

This belonged to Class V. of the strong verbs (147). 
It was originally a subjunctive of the preterite, but 
had discarded some of the forms belonging to the sub- 
junctive, and taken those of the indicative in their 
place : — 

Sing. Present. Preterite. 

1. wille, will, wolde, woidd, 

2. wilt, woldest, 

3. wille. wolde. 
PI. 

1. 2. 3. willaS. woldon. 

262. In Early English, forms of the present with o 
instead of i were common, and wol and wil stood side 
by side until the fifteenth century. Indeed, a relic of 
the former is still preserved in the colloquial form 
won't, which is- a contraction of wol not, which itself 
was sometimes written as wonot 

263. Apparently, by analogy with the preterite - 
present verbs, the verb need frequently drops the s of 
the third person singular of the present tense when 
followed by the infinitive of another verb ; and ' he 
need not do it/ for instance, would, perhaps, be re- 
garded as more common than 'he needs not do it.' 
This usage certainly goes back to the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, and is perhaps earlier. 

IRREGULAR VERBS. 

264. Beside the preterite -present verbs, there are 
three which deserve special mention. One of these is 



The Verb. f 347 

the verb do, which still exhibits the peculiarity of that 
primitive reduplication by which the preterite was 
originally denoted. The modern forms exhibit little 
variation from the Anglo-Saxon don, dide, don, except 
that, in the present singular, they have abandoned the 
vowel-variation of the second and third persons. The 
original forms for that number were do, dest, deft, and 
the plural doft. 

265. The verb go, both in the earliest and latest 
periods, has supplied its preterite by one taken from 
another stem. In Anglo-Saxon, while it had the form 
geong for the preterite, it more commonly made use of 
eode, and this appeared as the usual preterite in Early 
and Middle English, with the spelling yode. There 
was also another Anglo-Saxon verb, wendan, ' to go/ 
which in Early English was inflected wenden, wende, 
went ; and to this the compound tenses I have went, 
I had went, frequently met with in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, belong. When, in the fifteenth century, yode was 
given up, the preterite wende, contracted into went, 
came to take its place as the preterite of go; the 
participle went disappeared ; and the verb wenden, 
which had now become wend by the dropping of the 
final en, developed the regular form wended. 

266. Finally, there remains the substantive verb, in 
which the roots of several verbs have been and still 
are represented. The following are the forms of the 
present tense, in both the indicative and subjunctive, 
in the West-Saxon dialect of the i\nglo-Saxon : — 



348 English Language. 



Sing. Indie. 


Subj. 


• Indie. 


Subj. 


i. eom, 


si, 


beo(m), 


beo, 


2. eart, 


si, 


bist, 


beo, 


3. is. 


si. 


MS. 


beo. 


pi. 








1, 2. 3. sind, sindon. 


sin, 


be63. 


beor 



267. The subjunctive form si did not last beyond 
the Anglo-Saxon period, nor did the plural sind, or 
sindon; but the singular indicative forms, eom, eart, 
is, have been preserved, with little change, through all 
the periods of the language. In the Northumbrian 
dialect of Anglo-Saxon appeared also, as the plural of 
the present indicative, the form aron, the ancestor of 
the present form ai'e. It has also been pointed out, in 
two instances, in early West-Saxon poetry ; but it was 
from the Northern dialect, aided by its exclusive use in 
the language of the Scandinavian invaders of England, 
that we owe its general adoption into our tongue. Even 
in the beginning of the Middle English period, are was 
far from common in the Midland and Southern dia- 
lects. Chaucer almost invariably uses be or ben as 
the plural of the present; and the same remark is 
true of Langlande, though are is more common with 
him than with Chaucer. The Northern writers, how- 
ever, use are regularly, and from them the practice 
extended, in the fifteenth century, to all. Be, how- 
ever, was constantly used as an indicative form, down 
to the seventeenth century, and even later, and is 
still occasionally employed in poetry, especially in 
the phrase, there be. The tendency showed itself, in 



The Verb. 349 

the sixteenth century, to limit the verb be to the sub- 
junctive, and this has now become the established 
general rule. 

268. The preterite is from an obsolete strong verb, 
wesan, of Class III. (144), meaning ( to dwell,' 'to 
exist/ and was thus inflected : — 



Sing. Indicative 


Subjunctive. 


i. wses, 


wsere, 


2. wsere, 


wsere, 


3. waes. 


wsere. 


pi. 




1, 2, 3. wseron. 


wseren. 



269. This is the only verb existing in Modern Eng- 
lish in which the original rhotacism has been preserved. 
In addition to the retention of the change of s into r, 
this preterite also shows vowel variation between the 
singular and the plural. 

270. These forms have remained substantially un- 
changed during all the periods of English language, 
subject only to the droppings of endings that have 
taken place in the case of the other verbs. An excep- 
tion is to be made in the case of the second person 
singular, which is strictly were ; and, in fact, thou 
were has been always in use in poetry. But the 
abandonment of vowel-change in the second person 
of the preterite of strong verbs naturally led to the 
disuse of this form. In the Early English period the 
modern inflection wast showed itself; and wast and 



35° English Language. 

were lasted side by side for several centuries, the 
former coming steadily more and more into use, and 
gradually displacing the latter from the language of 
prose. But along with these a new form, wert, was 
developed, somewhat after the analogy of shal-t and 
wilt-t, the final /, in fact, being an older suffix for the 
second person than the usual st. Wert does not seem 
to have been common before the sixteenth century, if 
it even be known at all ; and it was often falsely spoken 
of as belonging to the subjunctive. Like were, it is 
now mainly confined to poetry ; but this may be due 
to the fact that the second person itself of the verb is 
little used in prose. 

271. The infinitive wesan, with the imperative 
and participle, early disappeared, and, as they have 
had no influence on the later language, need not be 
mentioned here. Our present infinitive, imperative, 
and participles are all derived from the Anglo-Saxon 
beon. 

272. It is to be added, that, in some of the Northern 
dialects, is was early used for all persons of the present 
singular and plural, and was for the same numbers and 
persons of the preterite. From the North, is has some- 
times made its way into the literary language ; but its 
use has been comparatively rare. The employment of 
was as a plural has been on a much more extensive 
scale ; and in the eighteenth century, even, the pret- 
erite is sometimes inflected with was as the regular 
plural, instead of were. This is more especially true 
of the second person, which is often you was. Cases 



The Verb. 351 

of its employment in the first and third persons are 
much more infrequent. 

With the verb ends the foregoing brief consideration 
of the changes that have taken place in the inflection of 
English. As a result of this consideration, a few gene- 
ral inferences can be safely drawn. One of them is, 
that the history of language, when looked at from the 
purely grammatical point of view, is little else than 
the history of corruptions. The account contained in 
the preceding pages is largely a record of endings that 
have been dropped, or perverted from their proper 
use ; of declensions that have been intermixed ; of 
conjugations that have been confounded ; of inflec- 
tions in every part of speech that have either passed 
away altogether, or have been confused with one an- 
other, and consequently misapplied. There are but 
few forms in use, which, judged by a standard once 
existing, would not be regarded as gross barbarisms. 
Terminations and expressions which had their origin 
in ignorance or misapprehension are now accepted by 
all ; and the employment of what was at first a blun- 
der has often become subsequently a test of propriety 
of speech. 

Nothing of this need be denied or even ques- 
tioned : all of it may be ungrudgingly admitted. But 
it is equally true that these grammatical changes, or 
corruptions if one is disposed so to call them, have 
had no injurious effects upon the development of the 
language ; or if, in single instances, they have been 



352 EnglisJi Language. 

followed by injurious effects, these have been more 
than counter-balanced by benefits which have been 
derived from other quarters ; for the operation of 
these changes is merely on the outside. It is rare, 
indeed, that they impair, or even modify in the slight- 
est, the real force of expression. It would now be 
looked upon as improper to say / have shook for / 
have shaken ; yet, in the days of Shakspeare and Mil- 
ton, the former was as allowable as the latter : and at 
this time all of us use the preterite for the past parti- 
ciple in a similar way in I have stood, or I have under- 
stood, and are not even conscious in so doing that we 
are guilty of what is, in strict grammar, a barbarism. 
Changes of such a character — and most changes are 
of this character — affect merely the garb of speech, 
not speech itself. To suppose that the English tongue 
has suffered any loss of strength, that it has entered 
upon a period of decline, because we now say, for 
instance, stood, where etymologically we ought to say 
stonden, is no evidence whatever of decay on its part : 
it is merely evidence of ignorance on our part of what 
constitutes the real life of language. It is, at the pres- 
ent time, a fashion to talk of our speech as being in 
some way less pure and vigorous than it was in the 
days of Alfred ; mainly, because then it had, on the 
one hand, fewer foreign words, and, on the other, more 
inflections, more formative affixes, and therefore more 
capacity for self-development. But the test of the 
value of any tongue is not the grammatical or lin- 
guistic resources which it may be supposed to possess, 



The Verb. 353 

it is the use which it makes of the resources it does 
possess. It is, on the very face, an absurdity to speak 
of a form of a language which has been made the 
vehicle of one of the great literatures of the world, 
which has been found fully adequate to convey all the 
conceptions of generations of illustrious men, as being 
inferior in power to a form of it, which, whatever its 
theoretical capacities, has embodied in its literature, 
as a matter of fact, little that is worth reading or 
remembering. As a mere instrument of expression, 
there is not the slightest question as to the immense 
superiority of the English of the nineteenth century 
over that of the ninth. It is equally proper to say 
that the former is just as pure as the latter, unless we 
restrict that epithet, as applied to language, to the 
narrow sense of being free from words that are not of 
native origin. Even in this respect there was no 
difference in the influences that operated upon the 
two forms of the speech; for the disposition to use 
foreign terms was just as potent in the Anglo-Saxon 
period as now, though the necessity for them was 
naturally far less pressing. No tongue can possibly 
be corrupted by alien words which convey ideas that 
cannot be expressed by native ones. Yet this elemen- 
tary truth is far from being universally accepted ; for 
it is a lesson which many learn with difficulty, and 
some never learn at all, that purism is not purity. 

The third inference concerns the assurance we may 
feel as to the stability of our speech derived from the 
influence, already immense and steadily increasing, of 



354 English Language. 

the language of literature. This is something that 
places tongues now in use in a position entirely differ- 
ent from that occupied by those employed in any previ- 
ous period in the history of the world. The cultivated 
speech is with us no longer confined to a small class 
which an irruption of barbarism, or a social and politi- 
cal revolution, may subject to the sway of those who 
speak a foreign or a corrupt idiom. It is the language 
of entire communities, and, through the operation of 
manifold agencies, is daily growing in universality and 
power. The whole tremendous machinery of educa- 
tion is constantly at work to strengthen it, to broaden 
it, to bring into conformity with it the speech of the 
humblest as well as of the highest. Day by day dia- 
lectic differences disappear ; day by day the standard 
tongue, in which is embodied classical English litera- 
ture, is widening and deepening its hold upon every 
class. The history here given, brief as it is, shows 
how violent and extensive have been the changes that 
have taken place in our inflection since the ninth 
century ; and yet, of those changes, how few in num- 
ber and slight in importance are such as belong to 
the last three hundred years. If the social and 
political agencies now in being continue to exist, we 
may confidently expect that the language of the future 
will never materially vary from what it is to-day. 
Movement there will be : differences will be devel- 
oped, but they will not be important either in their 
nature or extent. Pronunciation will probably be 
most affected; but words and their meanings, gram- 



The Verb. 355 

matical inflections and constructions, will never, on 
any large scale, move away from usage which a great 
literature has made more or less familiar to all, and 
to the readers and students and creators of which 
every generation adds a constantly increasing number. 
English, in the form which it has had essentially for 
the last three hundred years, may doubtless disappear; 
but its destruction, if it ever takes place, will be under 
conditions such as have never before existed, and will 
be owing to agencies which differ wholly from those 
that have brought about the ruin of any of f he great 
cultivated languages of the past. 



INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 



Abbreviations. — Adj., adjective; adv., adverb; art., article; corn- 
Par., comparative degree; comp. part., compound participle; defec, defec- 
tive; demon., demonstrative; imper., impersonal; indef., indefinite; indie, 
indicative mood; injin., infinitive; inter j., interjection; interrog., inter- 
rogative; irreg., irregular; n., noun; num., numeral; p.p., passive parti- 
ciple; p.pres., present^ participle; pi., plural number; per., person; pers., 
personal; poss., possessive; prep., preposition; pres., present tense; pret., 
preterite tense; pron., pronoun; v., verb; v. pret.-pres., preterite-present 
verb; v. s., strong verb; v. iv., weak verb; v. s. {v. iv.), strong verb origi- 
nally weak; v. iv. {v. s.) , weak verb originally strong; v. iv. t v. s., weak 
verb originally strong, and still possessing some strong forms. 



A, pron. pers., 218. 

A, prep., 133. 

Abide, v. s., 268, 275, 278, 285. 

Abidden, p. p. from abide, 278, 

285. 
Ache, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Agan, v. pret.-pres., 343. 
Aged, adj., 292. 
Ah, v. pret.-pres., 343. 
Aid, adj., 202. 
An, art., 237. 
An, num., 237. 
An, pron. indef., 237. 
Apparatus, n., 192. 
Are, v. irreg., 38, 348. 
Aron, v. irreg., 348. 
Ashes, n., 180. 
Ass, n., 180. 
Asschen, n., 180. 
Assen, n.,pl. of ass, 180. 

Bad, adj., 205. 
Badder, adj., 205. 



Baddest, adj., 205. 

Bake, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 

Baken, p.p. from bake, 251. 

Ban, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 

Band, n., 159. 

Bard, n., 31. 

Bare, pret. from bear, 280. 

Bark, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 

Basket, n., 31. 

Be, v. irreg., 132, 159, 325, 326, 

3 2 7, 33 6 > 337, 33 8 > 34 8 , 349» 

35°- 
Bear, v. s., 257, 266, 279, 286. 

Beat, v. s., 263, 284. 

Beatan, v. s., 263. 

Become, v. s., 336. 

Bee, n., 180. 

Been, n., pi. of bee, 180. 

Begen, num., 215. 

Begin, v. s., 159, 273, 275, 327. 

Begonne, p. p. from begin, 2S3. 

Begmmen, p. p. from begin, 283. 

Being going, comp.part., 334. 

357 



35 8 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Being loved, comp. part., 334. 
Bellow, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Ben, from be, v. irreg., 348. 
Bend, v. zv., 299. 
Beon, v. irreg,, 132, 336, 337, 

348, 35°- 
Beorg, 11., 34. 
Bequeathe, v. w. (v. s.), 249, 

267. 
Beran, v. s., 266, 279. 
Bernan, v. zo., 289. 
Beseech, v. zu., 99, 304. 
Beseeched, pret. from beseech, 

304. 
Bestead, v. zv., 297. 
Bet, v. zv., 297. 
Betide, v. w., 300, 301. 
Bid, v. s., 266, 275, 280, 284. 
Bid, pret. from bide, 274. 
Bidan, v. s., 268, 275. 
Bidclan, v. s., 266, 275. 
Bide, v. s., v. w., 268, 271, 274, 

275, 280. 
Bind, v. 7V., 264, 276, 284, 331, 

332. 
Bmdan, v. s., 264, 331, 332, 333 
Biscop, it., 34. 
Biscop-rice, n., 34. 
Bishop, 71., 34. 
Bishopric, n., 34. 
Bitan, v. s., 268. 
Bite, v. s., 268, 276, 279, 284. 
Black, adj., 85, 87. 
Black, it., 87. 
Black, v. w., &y. 
Blackness, n. , 85. 
Blandan, v. s. (Gothic), 160. 
Blandan, v. s., 161, 250. 
Blawan, v. s., 263. 
Bledan, v. w., 300. 
Bleed, v. w., 300. 
Blend, v. w., 160, 248, 250, 299. 
Blendan, v. w., 250. 
Bless, v. w., 295. 
Blind, adj., 198, 199, 200, 202, 

203. 



Bliss (blissc), 117. 

Blow, v. s., 260, 263. 

Blow, v. w. (v. s.), (' to bloom *), 

248. 
Blowed, pret. from blow, v. s. 9 

246. 
Boc, 11., 186. 
Boc-hus, ;/., 86. 
Bond, 11., 159. 
Book, 11., 186, 187. 
Book-house, n., 86. 
Born, p. p. from bear, 286. 
Borne, p. p. from bear, 286. 
Borough, 11., 187. 
Boughten, adj., 261. 
Bounden, p. p. from bind, 283, 

284. 
Bow, v. w. {v. s.), 250. 
Brace, n., 186. 
Brad, adj., 202. 
Braid, z>. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Brake, pret. from break, 280. 
Bran, /;., 31. 

Break, z>. j\, 266, 280, 284. 
Brecan, v. s., 266. 
Brecen,/./. fiom brecan, 279. 
Bredan, z/. w., 300. 
Breeches, n., 186, 187. 
Breed, v. zv., 300. 
Brethren (brethre, bretheren), 

n., 115, 189, 190. 
Brew, v. w. {v. s.), 250. 
Brighte, adv., 117. 
Bring, v. w., 303. 
Bringan, z/. zu , 303. 
Brisket, ;^., 31. 
Broad, adj., 202. 
Broc, 11., 186. 

Brocen, /. /. of brecan, 279. 
Brogue, ?*., 31. 
Brook, v. zu. (v. s.), 2.50. 
Brother, n., 115, 189, 190. 
BroSru, n., 115, 189. 
Bu, num., 215. 
Build, z 1 . tc'., 299. 
Burh, n., 1S7. 



Index of Words and Phrases. 359 



Burn, v. w., 248, 289. 

Burst, v. w. (v. s.), 248, 297, 298. 

Bursted, pret. from burst, 298. 

Bursten,/./. from burst, 251. 

Buy, v. w., 303. 

►by, suffix, 36. 

Bycgan, v. w., 303. 

Byr, n. (Norse), 36. 

Cabin, n., 31. 

Caer, n. (Celtic), 32. 

Call, v. w., 38. 

Can, v. prtt.-pres., 340. 

Carpenter, n., 85. 

Carve, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 248. 

Carven, p.p. from carve, 251. 

Cast, z'. w.j 261, 297, 298. 

Casted, pret. from ^j/, 298. 

Casten, p. p. from <t#j/, 261. 

-caster, suffix, 15. 

Catch, 7/. w., 122, 303, 304. 

Catched, pret. from <:#£://, 122. 

3°4- 
Ceosan, v. s., 269. 
Cepan, v. w. 293, 302. 
Cernan, v. w., 99. 
-cester, suffix, 15. 
Cherub, ?z., 193. 
Cherubim, n., 193. 
Chest, ;z., 99. 
-Chester, suffix, 15. 
Chew, z>. w. (v. s.), 250 
Chide, v. s., 258, 268, 274, 276, 

279, 284, 300. 
C hided, pret. from chide, 246, 

255- 
Chief, adj., 205. 

Children, /z., 115, 117, 189, 190. 
Chirche, «., 99. 
Chirne, z/. w., 99. 
Chode, pret. from ^ *'</<?, 274, 

276. 
Choose, v. s., 269, 284. 
Choosed,/;r/. from choose, 246. 
Church, 11., 99. 
Churn, v. w., 99. 



Cidan, e/. s., 268. 

Cildru, //., 115, 189. 

Cist, n., 99. 

Cladde,/r<?/. from clothe, 304. 

Clan, /z., 31. 

ClaSian, v. w , 304. 

Cleave, v. w., v. s. (' to adhere '), 

249, 253, 254, 268, 275, 278. 
Cleave, v. w., v. s. ('to split '), 

250, 252, 254, 269, 284, 302. 
Clepe, v. w., 38. 

Clifan, v. s., 268. 

Climb, v. w., v. s., 120, 121, 

253, 254, 264, 274, 276, 287. 
Climban, v. s., 264. 
Cling, v. s., 264, 265, 276. 
Clingan, v. s., 264, 265. 
C liven, p. p. from cleave, * to 

adhere,' 278. 
Clomb, pret. from climb, 264, 

274, 276, 287. 
Clothe, v. w., 304. 
Cnawan, v. s., 263. 
-coin, suffix, 15. 
Comand, p. pres. from come, 334. 
Come, v. s., 266, 283, 326, 327, 

33 2 > 
Corned, pret. from come, 246, 

255- 
Comen,/./. from come, 283. 
Con, v. w., 340. 
Consummate,/./., 306. 
Cook, n., 33. 
Cook, v. w., 33. 
Cost, v. w., 297. 
Coude, pret. of can, 340. 
Couple, ;/., 186. 
Couthe, pret. of can, 340. 
Cow, ;*., 115, 186, 187, 190. 
Crawan, v. s., 263. 
Create,/./. 306. 
Creep, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 250, 

301. 
Crow, v. s., v. w., 121, 248, 253, 

263. 
Cu, n., 186. 



360 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Cue, n., 33. 

Cucean, v. w., 33. 

Cuma, v. s., 332. 

Cuman, v. s. 9 266, 279, 332, 339, 

340. 
Curse, v. w., 295. 
Cut, v. w., 261, 297. 
Cutten, /. /. of cut, 261. 
Cy, n., 115, 189. 
Cyng, n., 173. 
Cyrice, n., 99. 
Cyssan, v. w., 293. 
CweSan, v. s., 266. 

DaMan, z/. w., 302. 

Dare, z\ pret.-pres. and z>. z#., 

340, 34i. 
Dare, pres. 3d per. sing., 341. 
Dares, pres. 3d per. sing., 341. 
Daughter, n., 117, 189, 190. 
Deal, z\ zc., 302. 
Dear, v. pret.-pres., 340. 
Deem, v. w., 290, 291, 305, 320, 

3 2I > 3 2 3- 
Deepe, a^z/., 117. 
Deer, n., 118, 185. 
Delve, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Deman, v. w., 290, 320, 321. 
Den, n., j6, 183. 
Denu, 71., 169, 176. 
Deor, //., 185. 
Derian, v. w., 290. 
Dician, v. w., 256. 
Dig, v. s. (v. w.), 246, 256, 270. 
Digged, pret. from dig, 246, 

256. 
Dight, v. w., 297. 
Ding, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Dip, v. w., 295. 
Disjoints, pres, 2d per. sing., 

3*5- 

Dive, z\ ze/. (z>. j.), 250, 287. 
Do, v. irreg., 85, 123, 241, 288, 

327, 328, 329, 330, 347. 
Doer, 11., 85. 
Dogma, n., 191. 



Dogmata,//, of dogma, 191. 

Dohtru, n., 189. 

Don, z/. irreg., 241, 347. 

Doth, pres. indie, pi., 318. 

Dought(e)ren, «., 117, 189. 

Dove, pret. of ^'z/d', 287. 

Down, ?z., 34. 

Drag, v. w., 249. 

Dragan, v. s., 267. 

Drave, pret. of drive, 276. 

Draw, z^. .$•., 249, 264, 267. 

Dread, v. w. (v. s.), 248, 292. 

Dream, n., 38. 

Dream, v. w., 302. 

Dreman, v. w., 302. 

Drifan, z/. s., 268. 

Drincan, z/. j., 119, 264. 

Drink, v. s., 119, 264, 273, 275, 

284, 285. 
Drinked, pret. from drink, 244. 
Drip, v. w., 118. 
Drive, v. s., 241, 259, 268, 274, 

276, 279, 283. 
Drive, pret, from drive, 274, 

279. 
Drove,/./, from drive, 286. 
Druid, 7i., 31. 
Drunken,/./, from drink, 283, 

284. 
Dry, z/. w., 118. 
Drygan, z\ zc., 118. 
Drypan, v. w., 118. 
Dun, it., 34. 

Durran, z/. pret-pres., 340. 
Dwell, z>. ze/., 299. 

Eage, n., 124. 

Eald, adj., 202. 

Ear, ;*., 124, 170, 172, 183. 

Eare, n, 124, 170, 171, 172. 

Eat, v. s., 249, 266, 270, 281, 

284. 
Effluvia, 71., 192. 
Elder, adj. compar., 116. 
Ellipsis, 71., 191. 
'Em, pro7i. pers., 216, 219. 



Index of Words and Phrases. 



361 



Englisc, adj., 22. 
¥,ode, pret. of gdn, 347. 
Eower, pron. pers., 213. 
Eower, pron. poss., 222. 
Errata, n., 192. 

Estriver, v. (Old French), 259. 
Etan, v. s., 266, 279. 
Excellentest, adj. superl., 204. 
Exists, pres. 2d per. sing., 315. 
Exquisitest, adj. superl., 204. 
Eye, n., 114, 124, 180. 
Eyen (eyne), pi. of eye, 114, 
180, 188. 

Fa, a^'., 189. 
Faire, a^z/., 117. 
Fall, v. s., 263, 283. 
Fame, n., 117. 
Fare, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Feallan, v. s., 263. 
Fedan, v. w., 300. 
Feed, z\ w., 300. 
Feel, z\ ze/., 301. 
Fefor, n., 34. 
Fela,/r0/z. indef., 237. 
Felan, z>. ze/., 301. 
Fele,/r<?#. indef., 237. 
¥e\\, p. p. oi fall, 286. 
Feohtan, a j., 264. 
Fight, v. s.\ 264, 276, 284. 
Find, v. s., 264. 
Findan, v. s., 264. 
Fisc, n., 157. 
Fish, «., 157. 
Fisks, 11. (Gothic), 157. 
Fix, v. w., 295. 
Fixen, n., 99. 
Flsesc-mangere, n., 86. 
Flang, pret. of _/&«£, 274. 
Flay, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Flea, n., 180. 

Flee, z\ w. (v. s.), 250, 301. 
Fleen, n., 180. 
Fleogan, z/. s., 269. 
Flesh-monger, 72., 86. 
Fling, v. s. t 259, 270, 274. 



Float, v. w. {v. s.), 2 50. 

Flon, n., 180. 

Flow, v. w. {v. s.), 248, 269. 

Flowan, v. w. (v. s.), 84, 269. 

Fly, v. s., 264, 269. 

Foe, n., 189. 

Fold, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 

Folk, n., 117, 181. 

Followand, p. pres, of follow, 

334- 
Yon, pi. oi foe, 189. 
Foot, /z., 118, 162, 163, 186, 187, 

188. 
Forlorn, adj., 251, 281 
Forlose, v. s., 251. 
Formula, n., 191. 
Forsake, v. s., 267, 270. 
Forsook,/./, from forsake, 286. 
Fot, n., 186, 190. 
Foughten,/./. from fight, 283, 

284. 
Fox, n., 99. 
Fraught, v. ze/., 304. 
Freeze, v. s., 269, 282, 284. 
Freezed, pret. oi freeze, 255. 
Freight, v. ze/., 304. 
Freosan, z/. s., 269. 
Fret, z>. ze/., 249, 270. 
Frore(n), p. p. oi freeze, 282. 

Ga, z/. irreg., 94. 
Gan,/r^. of £7>z, 273, 327, 328. 
Gar, v. ze/., 100. 
Gat, pret. of £■<?/, 280. 
Ge, prefix, 307. 
Geld, z/. ze/., 299. 
Genius, n., 192. 
Genus, n., 191. 
Geong, /rr/. of gdn, 347. 
Get, z>. j"., 266, 280, 284, 338. 
Getan, v. s., 266. 
Gewis(s), adj., 345. 
Gifan, v. s., 266. 
Gild, v. za., 299. 
Gin, v. s., 264, 271, 273, 327, 
328. 



362 Index of Words and Phrases, 



Ginnan, v. s., 264. 

Gird, v. w., 299. 

Give, v. s., 266, 283. 

Glen, 71., 31. 

Glide, v. w. (v. s.), 1 19, 120, 249. 

Glidan, v. s., 119. 

Glit, pres. jd per. sing. y 319. 

Glitterand, /. pres. of glitter, 

334- 
Gnaw, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 249, 255. 
Gnawn,/./. of gnaw, 2515. 
Go, v. irreg., 299, 326, 334, 347. 
Gorme(n), pret. p/. of gin, 327. 
Good, adj., 205. 
Gooder, adj. compar., 205. 
Goodest, adj. compar., 205. 
Goose, 71., 118, 186, 187. 
Gora, v. (Norse), 100. 
G6s, 71., 186. 
Got, I have, 338. 
Grave, 11 ., 159. 
Grave, z/. z#. (7/. j-.), 249, 254. 
Greet, v. w., 293. 
Gretan, v. w., 293. 
Grind, v. s., 121, 264, 276. 
Grindan, v. s., 264. 
Gripe, v. w, {v. s.), 249. 
Grove, 71., 159. 

Grow, v. s., 121, 260, 263, 326. 
Growan, z>. j., 263. 
Growed, /r^/. of grow, 255. 
Gun, /r*/. //. of £7/z, 273. 
Gunne(n),/r^.//. of gin, 273, 

3 2 7- 

Ha, pro n. pers., 218. 

Haban, v. w. (Gothic), 241. 

Hald, v. s., 94. 

Haldan, v. s. (Gothic), 160. 

Ham(e), ;z., 94. 

Hang, v. s. and v. w., 248, 251, 

252, 253, 263, 264, 265. 
Hangan, v. s., 263. 
Hate, v. w., 308, 332. 
Hath, pres. jdper.p/., 318. 
Hatian, v. w., 332. 



Have, v. w., 241, 304, 325, 326, 

335- 

Have told, to, infi.71., 333. 

Havede, pret. of have, 304. 
Having been, comp.part., 335. 
Having been going, comp. part. y 

335- , 
Having been gone, co7np. part., 

335- 
He, pro7t. pers., 129, 214, 215, 

218, 219, 222. 
He, it is, 222. 
Healdan, v. s., 161, 263. 
Hear, v. w., 290, 301. 
Heat, v. w., 301. 
Heave, v. w., v. s., 121, 249, 252, 

267. 
Hebban, v. s., 267. 
Help, v. w., v. s., 120, 121, 248, 

252. 
Helpan, v. s., 162. 
Hem, pron. pers., 115, 216, 219. 
Hemself , pro7i. reflex., 228. 
Heng,/?r/. of ha7ig, 265. 
Her, pro7t. pers., 219, 221. 
Her, it is, 221. 
Here, pron. pers., 11*5. 216, 219, 

225, 226. 
Her'n (hiren), pron., 226. 
Heres,/n?;z., 224, 225, 226. 
Hers, pro7i., 224, 225, 226. 
Hes,p7'07i.pers.,9J. . 
Het, pret of heat, 301. 
Hew, v. w., v. s., 248, 254. 
Hidden,^./, of hide, 255, 257, 

258, 260, 284. 
Hide, v. s. {v. zv.), 255, 257, 258, 

260, 270, 284, 301. 
Hight, v. w., 248, 297. 
Him, pron. pers., 129, 214, 215, 

216, 217, 219, 221, 230. 
Him, it is, 221. 
Himself, pron. reflex., 227. 
Himselven, pron. reflex., 227. 
Hira, pro7t. pers., 222. 
Hire, p? 071. pers., 219, 222, 225. 



Ltdex of Words and Phrases. 



363 



Hiren, pron., 226. 

H\xts, pron., 224, 225, 226. 

His, pron. pers., 97. 

Has, pron., 129, 219, 222, 230. 

His s&M, pron. reflex., 227. 

His'n (hisen), pro7t., 226. 

Hit, pron. pers., 129, 214, 217, 

218, 219. 
Hit, v, w., 297, 306. 
Hlinian, v. w., 302. 
Hold, v. s., 160, 263, 285. 
Holden, p.p., from hold, 285. 
Honorablest, adj. super I. , 204. 
Horse (hors), n., 117, 169, 174, 

181, 183. 
Hose, n., 180. 

Hosen,//. of hose, 180, 188. 
How, adv., 232. 
HriSe, 11., 34. 
Hurt, #. w., 297, 298, 306. 
Hurted, pret. of hurt, 298. 
Hwa,/?wz. interrog., 229, 230. 
Hwa,/r<?7z. indef., 237. 
Hwaet, pron. interrog., 229, 230, 

232. 
HwaeSer, pron. itzterrog., 229, 

230, 232. 
Hwilc,/r<?;z. interrog., 229, 230, 

231. 
Hypothesis, ^., 191. 
Hyran, v. w., 290, 302. 

\,pron.pers., 129, 213, 217, 219. 

I, it is, 222. 

i, prefix, 218, 307. 

\,prep., 218. 

Ic, pron. pers., 213, 217. 

Ice-berg, /*., 34. 

Ich, pron. pers., 217. 

I-lent,/./. from lend, 307. 

Ilk, pron. demon., 212. 

In,/r^., 133,218. 

Index, /z., 192. 

Is, pro?z. pers., 97. 

Is, pres. siitg. and ^/., 94, 350. 

Is being built, 134. 



Is being reaped, 338. 

Is building, 134. 

Is reaped, 337. 

I-sworn, /. p. of swear, 307. 

It, pron. pers., 129, 217, 218, 

219, 220. 
It own, 129. 

Its, pron., 129, 130, 220, 230. 
I-wis, adv., 345. 

Kalla, v. (Norse), 38. 

Keep, v. w., 293, 302. 

Kill, v. w., 239. 

Kine, n.,pl. of cow, 115, 187. 

King, 71., 173, 178. 

Kirk, n., 99. 

Kirn, v. w., 99. 

Kiss, v. w., 293. 

Kist, n., 99. 

Knead, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 

Kneaden,/./. of knead, 251. 

Kneel, v. w., 301, 302. 

Knit, v. w., 297. 

Know, v. s., 260, 263, 283. 

Knowed, pret. of know, 244. 

Kye, pi. of «?ze/, 187, 189. 

Kyn,//. of <:tfw, 189. 

Lade, z/. w., v. s., 249, 254, 260. 

Laden, /. p. of /rttfV, 260. 

Laedan, z>. w., 300. 

Laefan, v. w , 302. 

Lan, n. (Celtic), 32. 

Lang, adj., 202, 203. 

Laugh, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 249. 

Lead, v. w., 300. 

Lean, v. w., 302. 

Leap, v. w. {v. s.), 120, 248, 301, 

302. 
Learn, v. w., 295, 299. 
Learned, adj., 292. 
Leave, v. w. t 302. 
Lend, v. w., 299, 307. 
Lenger, adj. compar., 116. 
Leosan, v. w. (v. s.), 281. 
Less, adj. compar., 205. 



364 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Lesser, adj. compar., 205. 

Let, v. w. {v. s.), 248, 297, 331. 

Library, 72., 86. 

Licgan, v. s., 266. 

Lie, v. s., 266. 

Lie, v. w. (v. s.), 250. 

Lift, v. w., 298. 

Lift, pret. of lift, 298. 

Light, v. w., 301. 

Lihtan, v. w., 301. 

List, pres. 3d per. sing., 319. 

lit, pret. of light, 301. 

Little, tftf)'., 205. 

Littler, adj. co?npar., 205. 

Littlest, adj. compar., 205 

Lixan, z/. w., 293. 

Load, z>. w., v. s., 249, 255, 260. 

Loaden,/. /. of /<?#</, 255, 260. 

Lock, v. w. (v. s.), 250. 

Long, adj., 116, 202, 203. 

Longer, adj. compar., 116. 

Lorn, adj., 251, 281. 

Lose, v. w. (v. s.), 250, 251, 281, 

301, 302. 
Louse, n., 187. 
Love, n., 117. 
Love, v. w., 239, 290, 305, 311, 

320, 321, 323, 330. 
Low, v. w., 248. 
Lowe, adj., 117. 
Luflan, v. w., 290, 311, 320, 321, 

T . 33 °* o 
Lus, n., 187. 

Lyhtan, v. w., 301. 

Masg, v. pret.-pres., 342. 

Msenan, v. w., 302. 

Magan, v. pret.-pres., 342. 

Make, z/. w., 304. 

Makede,/7^/. of make, 304. 

Man, n., 118, 159, 162, 187. 

Man, pron. indef, 237. 

Me, pron. per s., 129, 219, 221. 

Me, it is, 221. 

Me, pron. indef., 237. 

Me self, pron. reflex., 227. 



Men,/r072. indef, 237. 

Mean, z\ zc/., 302. 

Meet, v. w., 300. 

Melt, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 

Metan, v. w., 300. 

Mete, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 

Methinks, v. w. impers., 303. 

Might, 2d per. from 7?z#y, 342. 

Milk, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 

Min, pron. pers. and poss., 222, 

Min(e), /?wz., 218, 219, 222, 

223, 224, 226. 
Mix, v. w., 299. 
Mot, v. pret.-pres., 343. 
Motan, v. pret.-pres., 342. 
Mote, v. pret.-pres., 343. 
Molten,/./, of melt, 251. 
More, adv., 204. 
Most, tfafr., 204. 
Mount, n., 34. 
Mourn, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Mouse, n., 118, 162, 187. 
Mouth, n., 124. 
Mow, z>. w., v. s., 248, 254. 
Much, adj., 205. 
Munt, 72., 34. 
Mus, n., 187. 
Must, v. pret-pres., 343. 
Mu3, 72., 124. 

My, pron., 218, 219, 223, 224. 
Myselven, pron. reflex., 227. 

Nasu, n., 124. 
Nat, adv., 94. 
Neat, 72., 185. 
Neat, 72., 185. 
Need, z>. w., 346. 
Nose, 72., 124. 

Oasis, 72., 191. 

Obliged, to be, 343. 

Old, adj., 116, 201, 202, 203. 

Older, adj., 116. 

Oleum, 72. (Latin), 87. 

Omen, 72., 191. 

Omina, //. of omen, 191. 



Index of Words and Phrases, 



365 



On, prep., 133. 

Onginnan, v. s., 327. 

Ought, v. defec, 343, 344. 

Our, pron., 219, 222, 223. 

Oure, pron., 219, 225. 

Our'n (ouren),/?wz., 226. 

Oures, 224, 225, 226. 

Owe, v. w. (v. pret-pres.), 344. 

Own, v. w., 343. 

Ox (oxe), n., 76, 101, 114, 117, 

170, 171, 172, 176, 180, 183, 

188. 
Oxa, n., 170, 171, 172, 176. 

Pain, n., 117. 

Pair, n., 186. 

Pass, v. w., 299. 

Paven,/./. of pave, 261. 

Pay, v. w., 305. 

Pen, n. (Celtic), 32. 

Pen, v. w., 295. 

Perfect, adj., 205. 

Persuade myself, I, 335. 

Persuaded, I am, 335. 

Petra, n. (Latin), 87. 

Petroleum, n.,8j. 

Peyne, n., 117. 

Phenomenon, n., 192. 

Piece, n,, 31. 

Plaid, n., 31. 

Plead, v. w., 301. 

Plead, pret. of plead, 301. 

Pol, n. (Celtic), 32. 

Pollute, p. p., 306. 

Proven,/./, of prove, 255, 261. 

Put, v, w., 261, 297. 

Putten,/./. of put, 261. 

Quake, v. w. in Anglo-Saxon 
and Modern English, also 
v. s. in Early English, 120. 

Quay, «., 31. 

Quench, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 

Quit, v. w., 297. 

Quod, v. defec, 267. 

Ouoth, v. defec, 266, 267. 



Quotha, inter;'., 218. 

Radius, n., 192. 

Rsecan, v. w., 303. 

Raught, pret. of reach, 122, 304. 

Reach, z/. w., 122, 303, 304. 

Read, v. w., 300, 301. 

Reafian, v. w., 302. 

Reap, v. w. {v. s.), 249. 

Reave, v. w., 302. 

Redan, v. w., 300. 

Reek, v. w. {v. s.), 250. 

Reeve, v, s., 259, 270. 

Regol, n., 33. 

Regollic, adj., 33. 

Regollice, adv., 34. 

Rend, v. w., 299. 

Rid, v. w., 297. 

Ridan, v. s., 268, 311, 318. 

Ride, v, s., 268, 273, 275, 284, 

Ring, v. s., 264, 273, 275. 

Ringan, v. s., 264. 

Rinnan, v. s. 264. 

Ris, firet. of rise, 274, 279. 

Risan, v. s., 268. 

Rise, v. s., 268, 274, 276, 279, 

283. 
Rist, pres. 3d per. sing., 319. 
Rit, pres. 3d per. sing., 311,319. 
Rive, v. iv., v. s., 250, 254. 
Rock-oil, //., 8j. 
Rode, p. p. of ride, 286. 
Ros, n. (Celtic), 32. 
Rose, p. p. of rise, 286. 
Rotten, adj., 251. 
Row, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Rue, v. w. {v. s.), 250. 
Run, v. s., 264, 276, 277. 
Rungen, p. p. of ring, 283. 

Sacan, v. s., 267. 
-sake, v. s., 267, 270. 
Sail, n., 186. 
Sal, v. pret. -pres., 94. 
Same, pron. demon,, 213, 



366 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Sang, »., 94. 

Saw, v. w., 259. 

Sawn,/?./', of saw, 255, 259, 260. 

Say, v. w., 305, 308. 

Says I, 314. 

Scacan, v. s., 267. 

Scathe, v. w. {v. s.), 249. 

Sceal, v. pret.-pres., 324, 341. 

Sceap, n., 185. 

Sceawian, v. w. t 260. 

Sceoan, v. w., 301. 

Sceran, v. s., 266. 

Sceotan, v. s., 269. 

Schal, v. pret.-pres., 273. 

Schoon, 11. pi. of j^0*, 180. 

Schulle(n), v. pret.-pres. pi., 273. 

Scinan, z>. s., 268. 

Scip, ^., 169, 171, 175. 

Serif an, z>. s., 268. 

Scrincan, v. s., 264. 

Score, n., 186. 

Sculan, v. pret.-pres., 341. 

St, pron. demon., 215, 233. 

Secan, z>. z>/., 99, 118, 293, 303. 

Seche(n), v. w., 99. 

See, v. s., 266. 

Seed, pret. of j^, 244. 

Seek, v. w., 99, 118, 293,303. 

Seethe, z\ ze\, z/. s., 250, 252, 

269, 284. 
Seistow, 308. 
Seke(n), v. w., 99. 
Self, adj., 227, 228. 
Sell, v. w., 159, 240, 303. 
Sellan, v. w., 303. 
Send, v. w., 298, 299. 
Sendan, v. w., 298. 
Seohan, v. s., 266. 
Seon, z\ s., 266. 
SeoSan, z\ j., 269. 
Seraph, n., 193. 
Seraphim, n., 193 
Set,z/.ze/., 295, 296, 297, 300, 326. 
Settan, v. w., 295. 
Shake, v. s., 267, 283. 
Shaked, /r^/. of shake, 246, 255. 



Shal(l), v. i>ret.-pres., 94, 324, 

34i, 342. 
Shamrock, n., 31. 
Shape, v. w., v. s., 120, 249, 255. 
Share, pret. of shear, 280. 
Shave, v. w., v. s., 249, 255. 
She, pron. pers., 215, 216, 219. 
Shear, z>. w. and z\ J., 249, 152, 

266, 280. 
Shed, v. w., 297. 
Sheep, n., 118, 185. 
Shew, pret. of show, 260, 288. 
Shew, z>. z£/., see show. 
Shine, z\ j., 252, 268, 276, 278, 

285. 
Shined, pret. of shine, 246. 
Shinen,/./. of ,r/z2>z<?, 278, 285. 
Ship, 71., 169, 175, 183. 
Shoe, n., 180, 301. 
Shook,/./, of shake, 286, 352. 
Shoon,//. of shoe, 180, 188. 
Shoot, v. s., 269, 284, 300. 
Shorten,/./, of .r/^0/, 269, 284. 
Shove, v. w. (v. s.), 250. 
Show, v. w., 259, 288. 
Shown,/./, of show, 255, 259, 

260. 
Shred, v. w., 297. 
Shrink, v. s., 264, 275, 284. 
Shrive, v. s. and v. w., 249, 252, 

268, 275. 
Shrunken,/./, of shrink, 283. 
Shul(en), v. pret.-pres. pi. , 342. 
Shut, z>. ze/., 297. 
Siche, pron. demon., 212. 
Sigh, v. w. {v. s.), 249. 
Sin, pron. poss., 222. 
Sind(on), v. irreg. pres. pi., 38, 

348. 
Sing, v. s., 239, 258, 272, 273, 

275> 2 77y 3 IX > 3 I2 > 3 20 > 3 2I > 

322, 330. 
Singan, v. s., 311, 320, 321, 330. 
Smgende,/./;^., 334. 
Sister, n., 117, 189, 190. 
Sistren,//. of sister, 117. 



Index of Words and Phrases. 367 



Sit, v. s., 256, 266, 285, 319. 

Sit,/./, of sit, 285. 

Sit, pres. jd per. sing., 319. 

Sittan, v. s., 85, 266. 

Sitten,/./. of sit, 285. 

Situate,/./., 306. 

Slsepan, v. s., 161. 

Slahan, v. s., 267. 

Slank, pret. of slink, 276. 

Slay, v. s., 264, 267. 

Slean, v. s., 267. 

Sleep, v. w. {v. s.), 120, 160, 

248, 301, 302. 
Slepan, v.s. (Gothic), 160. 
Slide, v. s., 258, 268, 274, 276, 

279, 284. 
Slidan, v. s., 268. 
Slincan, v. s., 265. 
Sling, v. s., 265. 
Slingan, v. s., 265. 
Slink, v. s., 265, 276. 
Slip, v. iv. (v. s.), 249, 250. 
Slit, v. iv. (v. s.), 249, 297. 
Slode, pret. of slide, 274. 
Smit, pret. of smite, 274, 279. 
Smitan, v. s., 268. 
Smite, v. s., 268, 274, 275, 279. 
Smoke, v. w. {v. s.)., 250. 
Smote, /. /. of smite, 286. 
Sneak, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Snow, n., 85. 
Snowy, adj., 85. 
Soche, pron. demon., 212. 
Sod, pret. and /. /. of seethe, 

269, 284. 
Sodden, /. /. of seethe, 284. 
Solstice, n., 86. 

Songe(n),/./. of j/^-, 277, 283. 
Sovereignest, adj. superl., 204. 
Sow, v. w., v. s., 248, 255. 
Spake, pret. of speak, 280. 
Span, z\ w. (v. s.), 248. 
Span, pret. of j^ztz, 276. 
Speak, v. s., 266, 280, 284 
Specan, v. s., 266, 279. 
Specen, /. /. of specan, 279. 



Spedan, v. w., 300. 

Speed, v. w , 300, 301. 

Spell, v. iv., 295. 

Spend, v. w., 299. 

Spew, v. w. {v. s.), 249. 

Spin, v. s., 265, 276. 

Spinnan, v. s., 265. 

Spit, v. w. and ^. j., 256, 270, 

297. 
Spittan, v. w., 256. 
Split, v. iv., 297. 
Spocen, /. /. of specan, 279. 
Spoil, v. iv., 295. 
Sprsedan, v. w., 295. 
Spread, v. w., 295, 297, 300. 
Spring, v. s., 273, 275. 
Springan, v. s., 265, 275. 
Spronge,/. /. of spring, 283. 
Sprout, z>. ze/.(z/. J.), 250. 
Sprungen, /. /. of spring, 283. 
Spurn, v. iv. (v. s.), 248. 
Squeeze, v. w., 288. 
Squoze,/rf/. of squeeze, 288. 
Staff, «., 258. 
Stale, /r^/. of steal, 280. 
Stamen, «., 192. 
Stamina,//, of stamen, 192. 
Stan, 11., 169, 171, 174, 181. 
Stand, v. s., 243, 267, 285. 
Standan, v. s., 243, 267. 
Stant, pres. jd per. sing, 319. 
Start, v. w., 296. 
Starve, v. iv. (v. s.), 120, 248. 
Stave, n., 258. 
Stave, v. w. and v. s., 253, 258, 

270. 
Stead, v. w., 297, 
Steal, v. s., 266, 280, 284. 
Stelan, v. s., 266. 
Step, v. iv. (v. s.), 249. 
Stick, v. s. {v. w.), 121, 257, 270. 
Stiken, v. s., 257. 
Stincan, v. s., 265. 
Sting, v. s., 265, 276. 
Stingan, v. s., 265. 
Stink, v.s., 265, 275. 



368 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Stint, v.w. (v. s.), 248. 
Stonden,/./. oistaiid, 285, 352. 
Stone (ston), n., 76, 88, 169, 

182, 183. 
Stool, n., 76. 
Strang, adj., 202, 203. 
Straught, pret. of stretch, 304. 
Streawian, v. w., 260. 
Streak, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Streccan, v. w., 304. 
Street, n., 15. 
Strenge, n., 258. 
Strenger, adj. compar., 116. 
Stretch, v. w., 304. 
Strew, z\ w., 259. 
Strewn,/./, of strew, 255, 259, 

260. 
Strican, z/. s., 268. 
Stricken, /. /. of strike, 268, 

269, 287. 
Stnd,/?r/. of stride, 274. 
Stride, v. s., 268, 274, 276. 
Stridan, v. s., 268. 
Strike, v. s., 265, 268, 287. 
String, n., 258. 
String, z/. s., 258, 270. 
Stringed, «^"., 258. 
Strive, v. s. and v. w., 246, 253, 

259, 270. 
Strong, adj., 116, 202, 203. 
Stronger, adj. compar., 116. 
Strove,/./, of strive, 286. 
Strow and strown. See strew 

and strewn. 
Strucken, /. /. of strike, 287. 
Such, pron. demo7t., 213, 231. 
Suck, v. w. (v. s.), 250. 
SvAche, pron. demon., 212. 
Sunge(n),/./. of j/;^, 261, 283. 
Sunnen-stede, n., 86. 
Sunstead, n., 86. 
Sup, z/. ze/. (v. s.), 250. 
Supreme, «^'., 205. 
Sustren, 71. pi., 189 
Swallow, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
-Swang,/r^/. of swing, 274, 276. 



Sware, pret. of swear, 280, 281. 
Swear, z/. j., 257, 267, 280, 281. 
Sweat, v. w., 297. 
Sweep, v. w., 248, 301, 302. 
Swell, v.w., v. s., 120, 248, 255. 
Sweostru, n. pi., 189. 
Swearian, v. s., 267. 
Swiche, pron. demon., 212. 
Swilc, /r<?7z. demon., 212. 
Swilche, pron. demon., 212. 
Swim, v. s., 265, 275. 
Swimman, v. s., 265. 
Swin, ??., 185. 
Swine, n., 185. 

Swing, v. s., 258, 265, 274, 276. 
Swingan, v. s., 265. 
Swink, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Swulche, pro n. demon., 212. 

Tacan, v. :., 267, 320. 
Tsecan, v. w., 303. 
Take, v. s., 267, 283, 320, 321. 
Tare, pret. of tear, 280. 
Teach, z\ z#., 122, 241, 303, 304. 
Teached, pret. of teach, 122. 
Tear, v. s., 159, 257, 266, 280, 

283. 
Tell, v. w., 37, 75> Il8 > I22 > 3°3> 

3°4- 
Tellan, v. w., 118, 303. 
Telled,/r^. of tell, 122, 304. 
Teran, v. s., 266. 
Than, conj., 236. 
Thank, z>. w., 291, 292. 
Thas, pron. demon., 209. 
That, /n?/z. demon., 208, 209, 

210. 
That,/r^. r^/., 233, 234, 235. 
That, art., 210, 211. 
That oon, 210, 
That other, 210. 
The, art., 129, 209, 210. 
The, adv., 209. 
The own, 129. 
Thee, pron. per s., 219, 221. 
Their, pron., 115, 219, 225, 226. 



Index of Words and Phrases. 369 



Their' 'n, pron., 226. 

Them, pron. pers., 97, 115, 216, 

217, 219, 221. 
Themself, pron. ^reflex. y 228. 
Then, art., 210. 
Thereof, adv., 129. 
These, pron. demon., 211. 
They, pron. pers., 115, 215, 216. 
Thilke, pron. demon., 212. 
Thine, pron., 218, 219, 224^ 226. 
Thing, n., 115, 117, 118, 181, 

185. 
Think, v. w., 303, 308, 313, 314. 
Thinkestow, 308. 
Thinks I, 314. 
This, pron. demon., 208, 211, 

212. 
Tho, pron. demon., 209. 
-thorp, suffix, 36. 
Those (thos), pron. demon., 209. 
Thou, pron. pers., 213, 219, 229. 
Thresh, v. u. {v. s.), 248. 
Thrive, v. s. and v. w., 120, 159, 

246, 253, 259, 268, 276. 
Throssen,/. p. of thrust, 261. 
Throw, v. s., 263. 
Thrust, v. iv., 261, 297. 
Thrusten, p. p. of thrust, 261. 
-thwaite, suffix, 36. 
Thy, pron., 218, 219, 223, 224. 
Tidian, v. iv., 300. 
Til, prep., 94. 
To,/r^., 94, 333. 
To, prep, 333. 
Toe, n., 117, 180. 
-toft, suffix, 36. 
Toft, /z. (Norse), 36. 
Ton,//, of &?*, 117, 180. 
Tone, the, 210. 

Tongue, n. 124, 170, 172, 183. 
Took,/./, of take, 286. 
Tooth, n., 124, 186, 187. 
-torp, suffix, 36. 
T65, ;z. 124, 186. 
T'other, 211. 
T'other, the, 210. 



Trade, pret. of tread, 280. 

Tre, n. (Celtic), 32. 

Tread, v. s., 266, 279, 280, 284. 

Tredan, v. s., 266, 279. 

Tree-wright, n., 85. 

Treow-wyrhta, n., 85. 

Trouthe, n., 117. 

Truth, n., 117. 

Tu, num., 215. 

Tunge, n., 124, 170, 171, 172. 

Tuon, v. (old High German), 

241. 
Turf, n., 187. 
Twa, num., 215. 
Twit, v. iv. (v. s.), 249. 

pa, pron. demon., 209. 

pe, pro7i. demo7i., 208. 

pe, pron. rel., 233. 

pe, instrtimental case of .$*, 209. 

pen,/?wz. demon, and a/-/., 210. 

pencan, ?y. w., 303. 

pes, pron. demon., 209, 211. 

pin, pron. pers. and poss. 9 213, 

222. 
pone, pron. demon., 208, 210. 
porp, /z. (Norse), 36. 
prawan, ^. j., 263. 
prifan, v. s., 268. 
pveiti, /z. (Norse), 36. 
pylc, pron. demon., 212. 
pyslic, pron. de?non., 212. 
pyncan, v. iv., 303. 
py, instrumeiital case of j*, 209. 

Uncouth, adj., 340. 

Understand, z>. s., 243, 352. 

Unwitting, «<;/y"., 345. 

tire, pron. poss., 222. 

Us, pron. pers., 219, 221. 

U ser, pron. pers. and poss., 213, 

222. 
Utan, z/. (subjunctive), 331. 

Virtuoso, «., 192. 
Virtuousest, ^"., 204. 



370 Index of Words and Phrases. 



Vixen, n., 99. 
Vortex, n., 192. 
Vox, n., 99. 

Wacan, v. s., 267. 
Wade, v. s. {v. w.), 249. 
Wake, v. s. t 246, 253, 254, 267, 

285. 
Waken,/./, of wake, 285. 
Walk, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Ware,/r*?/. of wear, 257, 280. 
Warp, z\ w. {v. s.), 248. 
Was,jJrrf. of &?, 159, 350. 
Was given a book, 338. 
Was told the truth, 338. 
Wash, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 249. 
W ashen,/./, of wash, 251. 
Wast,/r^. 2d per. sing., 349. 
W r at, v. pret.-pres., 344. 
"Wave, pret. of weave, 280. 
Wax, z>. w. (z>. j.), 120, 249, 255. 
Waxen,/./, of wa.r, 255. 
Wear, z>. s. (v. w.), 121, 257, 

270, 280. 
Weave, v. s., v. w., 249, 253, 

266, 280, 284. 
Wed, v. w., 298. 
Weep, v. w. (v. s.), 120, 248, 

301, 302. 
Weet, v. pret.-pres., 344. 
Wefan, v. s., 266. 
Well, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Wend, v. w., 299, 347. 
Wendan, v. w., 347. 
Wenden, v. w., 347. 
Went, pret. of wend and go, 

299, 347- 
Went, p.p. of 2*;<?m/, 347. 
WeorSan, v. s., 132, 336. 
Were, pret. 2d per. sing., 349. 
Werian, z\ «/., 257. 
Wert, /r^/. 2d per. sing., 350. 
Wesan, z>. s., 132, 336, 337, 349, 

35°- 
Wet, v. w., 292, 297. 



What, pron. interrog., 229, 230, 

231, 236. 
Whet, v. w., 297. 
Whether, pron. interrog., 232. 
Which, pron. interrog., 231, 

232. 
Which, pron. rd., 234, 235, 23d 
Which that, 234. 
Which, the, 234. 
VfhWk, pron., 23*. 
Whilom, adv., 177. 
Whiskey, n., 31. 
Who, pron. interrog., Jj, 128, 

129, 214, 229, 230, 231. 
Who, pron. ret., 235, 236. 
Who, pron. indef., 237. 
Whom, pron. interrog., 129, 

230, 231. 
Whom,/r07?. ret., 235, 236. 
Whom, than, 236. 
Whoop, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Whose, pron. interrog., 230. 
Whose, pron. rel., 235, 236. 
Whu\k,pron., 231. 
Why, adv., 232. 
Wich, pron., 231. 
Wield, v. w. (v, s.), 120. 
Wif, ;/., 124. 
Wife, «., 124. 
Will (wil, wille), v. pret.-pres. f 

3 2 4, 346. 
Willan, v. pret.-pres., 345, 346. 
Win, v. s., 265, 276, 277, 278. 
Wind, v. s., v. w., 248, 253, 265, 

276. 
Windan, v. s., 265. 
Winnan, v. s., 265. 
Wipe, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Wis, v., 345. 
Wiss, v. w., 345. 
Wissian, v. w., 345. 
Wist, pret. of wot, 344, 345- 
Wiste, pret. of wdt, 344, 345. 
Wit, pron. pers., 213, 215, 
Witan, v. pret.-pres., 344. 
Wite, v., 249. 



Index of Words and Phrases. 



371 



Withdraw, v. s., 85. 
Withhold, v. s., 85. 
Withstand, v. s., 85, 243. 
Witting, p. pres. of zvot, 345. 
Wol, v. pret.-pres., 346. 
Wonnen,/./. of win, 277. 
Wont, z>. w., 297. 
Won't (wonot), 346. 
Work, v. w., 303. 
Worse, adj. compar., 205. 
Worser, «^'. compar., 2o£. 
Worth(en), z>. J., 132, 336, 337. 
Wot, v. pret.-pres., 344, 345. 
Woteth, pres. 3d per. sing., 345. 
Wotting, /. /r^j". of mtf, 345. 
Wrang, pret. of wring, 274. 
Wreak, z>. w. (z/. j.), 249. 
Wreathe, v. w. {v. s.), 249. 
Wreathen,/./. of wreathe, 251. 
Wring, tf. J., 265, 274, 276. 
Wringan, v. s., 265. 
W ringed, pret. of wring, 255. 
Writ, pret. of W7'ite, 274. 
Writan, z>. j , 268. 
Write, z\ j., 268, 271, 273, 274, 

275, 284. 
Writhe, v. w. (v. s.), 249. 
Writhen, /. /. of writhe, 251. 
Wrote, /. p. of write, 286. 



Wrought, /r<tf. of work, 303. 
Wuch,/;-W2., 231. 
Wyle, v. pret.-pres., 324. 
Wyrcan, v. w., 307. 

Y,pre/ix,307. 

Yawn, v. w. {v. s.), 249, 251. 

Y-be, p.p. of be, 307. 

Ye, pron.pers. % 128, 129, 219, 

220, 221, 229. 
Year, n., 115, 117, 181. 
Yell, v. w. (v. s.), 248. 
Yelp, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Y-go,p.p. oi go, 307. 
Yield, v. w. {v. s.), 248. 
Y-maked,/./. of wa^, 307. 
Y 'ode, pret. of ^v, 347. 
Yolden,/./. oi yield, 251. 
Yon, pron. demon., 213. 
You, pron.pers., 128, 129, 219, 

220, 221, 229. 
Your, pron.pers. and poss., 219, 

222, 223. 
Youre,pron., 219, 225. 
Your'n (youren), pron., 226. 
Yours (youres),/>r0>/., 224, 225, 

226. 
Y-sunge, p. p. of sing, 261. 
Y-wis, adv., 345. 



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